for the future. It is composed primar-
ily of exposition, the presentation of
narrative information that provides
context for the story and plot, includ-
ing character development and the
establishment of setting and/or loca-
tion. Through the story’s exposition,
we discover that food critic Julianne
and her best friend Michael, a sports
reporter, have made a deal: if neither
has found a suitable mate by the time
they both reach 28, they will marry 2.4 ”I’ve got exactly four days to break up a wedding, steal the bride’s fella,
each other. The plan may have been and I haven’t a clue how to do it.” Her expectations confounded, Julianne is
a lark at first, but for Julianne at 28 poised to set the events of act 2 in motion. My Best Friend’s Wedding (P. J.
it offers the promise of marriage to Hogan, 1997).
a man she actually likes. Her only
other significant relationship with a
man at this time is with George; he
is likeable but, inconvenient for her,
gay. The big date is about to arrive,
and Julianne is anxious to cash in
the wager, but Michael upsets her
plan. He calls to say he’s fallen in
love with Kim, a woman he’s met in
Chicago. He has proposed and she
has accepted. Act 1 ends and act 2
is cued succinctly by Julianne: “I’ve
got exactly four days to break up a 2.5 A complication Julianne hadn’t considered punctuates act 2: she dis-
wedding, steal the bride’s fella, and I covers that Kim is tougher than she looks.
haven’t a clue how to do it” (fig. 2.4).
With the advent of act 2 “com-
plications ensue”: Julianne’s various attempts to embar- comedy narrative is upset and in the end Michael rejects
rass the bride-to-be fail, in large part because Kim is Julianne for Kim (fig. 2.6). (The standard romantic
sweet, smart, and tough (fig. 2.5). Making matters comedy formula would have Michael finally reject Kim,
worse, Michael really is in love with Kim. Steven Spiel- who would be revealed to be dependable but no fun,
berg has famously said that the key to all love stories for Julianne, who is a pain in the neck but lots of fun.)
is “the obstacle,” what prevents the couple from simply In the film’s final moments, Michael’s apparent happi-
getting on with their lives together. Here the film plays ness with Kim actually makes Julianne happy, which
with this formulaic element: Kim is the obstacle for surprises Julianne as much as it surprises us.
Julianne and Michael, or so the film seems to suggest Writers often discuss the importance of characters
at the start of act 2. But as act 2 plays out, we discover changing in this final stage or act of the drama. Though
that it is Julianne who is the obstacle to the true love My Best Friend’s Wedding seems slight and sweet, its
match of Kim and Michael, a mild surprise that com- third act carries a significant message: Julianne does not
poses much of act 3. Indeed, act 3 is cued by a climactic get what she (thinks she) wants, but in the end she’s a
showdown in a ballpark women’s bathroom (fig. 2.5) better person for it. She learns a thing or two about love
as Kim finally abandons “being nice” and decides to even though, for the moment, she hasn’t found it for
fight for her man. As in many three-act films, the climax
marks a turning point in the narrative. exposition The presentation of narrative information that pro-
The final act is composed of the wedding itself—a vides context for the story and plot, including character development
celebration of the right couple getting hitched—and it and the establishment of setting and/or location.
is the film’s mild surprise that the standard romantic
2-1 NArrATIve STrUCTUre 25
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closure on the film is called a deus
ex machina (roughly “God from
the machine”), the introduction of a
contrived event to solve the problems
set in motion in the story.
All that is left for them, then, is
one last moment together in the rail-
way café. But they are denied that as
well, as a second fateful occurrence
interrupts their final brief encoun-
ter; one of the woman’s chatty
friends arrives and sits down at their
2.6 We are mildly surprised when act 3 ends with Michael and Kim’s happy
wedding. table. The friend blathers on even
as the doctor says good-bye, lightly
touches Laura’s shoulder, and exits
herself. The film’s life lesson is that even thwarted desire to catch his train. To the friend’s bewilderment, Laura
has its rewards, a lesson contained in the mild surprise follows him out onto the platform (fig. 2.7). As Alec’s
of the third act. train whizzes by, for a moment we are led to believe
Closure—the final resolution of the various nar- that Laura might hurl herself onto the tracks. But she
rative threads and the various questions or problems doesn’t. She returns home to an uncertain reunion with
posed by the story's conflicts—can be neat or untidy; her husband. The film may well end affirming the sanc-
closure can be the consequence of a logical progres- tity of marriage—“You’ve been a long way away,” the
sion of events or the result of some magical, fateful husband remarks in the last scene, as if he knows what’s
occurrence. In David Lean’s 1945 melodrama Brief she’s been up to, “Thank you for coming back to me”—
Encounter, for example, the narrative fix—a term used but it also makes clear that “true love” will never be
to describe the conflicts set in motion in the story— realized. Moreover, though the final scene ends with
concerns the relationship between a doctor (Alec) and a Laura embracing her husband, whatever she still feels
housewife (Laura), both married to other people. They for Alec is unresolved. Closure need not tie up every
meet by chance at a railway station café, talk, meet loose end in the story; life simply goes on.
again, and fall in love. Both still care for their spouses,
but the prospect of being together is difficult to resist.
This desire leads to a rendezvous at Alec’s friend’s
apartment where an affair seems sure to begin. But just
as they are about to give in to their desire, the friend
arrives unexpectedly and the opportunity is lost.
Closure is complicated here: Alec and Laura are,
after all, proper married people, and what they have
planned to do is deeply problematic. Two things we
know for sure: they're in love, and they can't be trusted
to resist temptation on their own. So fate intervenes,
twice. Out of the blue, Alec tells Laura that he has
been offered a post in South Africa and has decided to
leave England, in part to keep from acting on his desire
to be with her. This seeming “hand of fate” imposing
2.7 Alec and Laura are forlorn; their chance at an affair
closure The resolution of narrative questions and/or problems. is now forever lost. Narrative closure in Brief Encounter
deus ex machina The introduction of a contrived event to solve (David Lean, 1945) is untidy; they return to their spouses
the problems set in motion in the story. but we fear—we know—that true love and happiness
have eluded them both forever.
26 NArrATIve AND GeNre
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2-1c The Hero’s Journey
The three-act formula roughly
matches the hero narrative proposed
by the religion and mythology scholar
Joseph Campbell. This paradigm,
which has roots in Greek mythol-
ogy, involves a lone male hero who
must endure or fight to achieve his
goal. His story has three stages: (1)
the hero ventures forth, (2) he faces
a trial of sorts (a series of obstacles
he must overcome, a series of fights 2.8 The retired gunfighter William Munny covered in mud after tending to
he must win), and (3) in the end he the hogs, most of which, we learn, “have the fever.” Unforgiven (Clint East-
returns home smarter (though not wood, 1992).
necessarily better off materially) than
he was when the story began.
Clint Eastwood’s western Unfor-
given (1992) illustrates the hero’s jour-
ney (figs. 2.8–2.10). The film begins as
William Munny, a retired gunfighter,
is unsuccessfully and unsatisfyingly
working his small farm. His wife dies,
leaving him to take care of their chil-
dren, another job he’s unsuited for.
The first stage of Munny’s jour-
ney begins when the town prosti-
tutes offer him the job of avenging 2.9 Tired and beat-up (note the gashes under both eyes), Munny endures
an attack on one of their co-workers; the trial stage of the narrative.
he straps on his guns and ventures
forth. In stage 2, the trial or combat,
he faces a series of challenges, cli-
maxing with a gunfight against the
vicious and corrupt town sheriff, the
inaptly named Little Bill.
After dispatching Bill, and in
doing so establishing justice for every-
one in the town of Big Whiskey, Wyo-
ming, Munny hangs up his guns and
returns to the domestic life he aban-
doned at the start of the film. He is
now wiser for having lived through
the trial. A final title card tells us of his
2.10 Having vanquished Little Bill and rid Little Whiskey of its villains,
move to San Francisco with his chil- Munny returns to the farm as the sun finally sets on his career as a gunfighter.
dren and that he is happy now earning
a living in the dry goods business.
The hero’s search is often for an answer to a single his mother. Though the specific content may not apply,
pressing question: Who am I? Sophocles’s Oedipus the we can see a variation of this “Who am I?” formula
King is the classic example of this quest narrative, cast as at play in a number of Hollywood films, including the
a tragedy: the play’s “hero” searches for his true identity Star Wars series (George Lucas, 1977–1983). With the
only to discover that he has killed his father and married universe in the balance, the serialized conflict between
2-1 NArrATIve STrUCTUre 27
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fantasy world of the film. Indeed
Lucas’s goal here is to use this simple
narrative framework to universalize
the drama in this timeworn story.
2-1d A and B Stories
Many film narratives employ a dual
structure: what screenwriters call A
and B stories, or kernel and satel-
lite stories. This formula prioritizes
one of the narratives, the A (princi-
pal or kernel) story, but simultane-
ously tracks a second narrative, the
B (secondary or satellite) story. The
2.11 Bonnie spies Clyde stealing her mother’s car. Rather than call the implicit promise inherent to this
police, she quickly gets dressed and joins him. Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur structure is that the A and B narra-
Penn, 1967).
tives will somehow intersect or at
least their resolutions will comple-
ment each other.
Arthur Penn’s 1967 film Bon-
nie and Clyde offers a good example
of this storytelling structure. The
film opens with Bonnie alone and
undressed in her bedroom. She is
tired of her life as a waitress in her
dusty little town and she is ready
for adventure, ready for someone to
come along and take her away from
this life. Opportunity knocks in the
person of the escaped convict Clyde
Barrow, whom she spies out her win-
dow as he is stealing her mother’s car
2.12 Bonnie admires Clyde’s gun. The gesture links the A and B narratives. (fig. 2.11). Rather than turn him in,
Bonnie joins Clyde in the stolen car
and the two embark on a crime spree.
the Empire and the rebels and the rivalry between Luke Two narratives are set in motion in this opening
Skywalker and Darth Vader chronicled in episodes 4 scene: (A) the crime-spree story and (B) the story attend-
through 6 is finally resolved only when Luke answers ing the fraught sexual relationship between the two out-
the question, “Who am I?” and comes to grips with his laws. As they ponder running off together in her mother’s
true identity, that he is Vader’s son. car (the A story), Bonnie admires Clyde’s pistol and goads
Lucas was well aware of Campbell’s work when he him flirtatiously, “Bet you wouldn’t have the gumption to
introduced the Star Wars series in 1977. The film is set use it” (the B story). The double entendre is thick here;
in a galaxy far, far away, but the story is at once acces- we know that she’s not only talking about shooting a gun
sible and familiar. We are meant to recognize these basic (fig. 2.12). Clyde is remarkably clueless: He shows her
formulas as an entrée into the otherwise unfamiliar, he’s adept with the pistol (in the A story), but after they
rob a local store and stop for their first real tryst, we dis-
cover why Clyde was so slow to follow Bonnie’s prompt
A and B stories (also, kernel and satellite stories) A
narrative formula that prioritizes one of the narratives while simulta- regarding sex (in the B story). Clyde is not, as he puts it,
neously tracking a second narrative. “much of a lover boy.” The rest of the film tracks both
narratives. The crime spree is followed in some detail,
28 NArrATIve AND GeNre
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story takes precedence again and the
legendary outlaws are gunned down
by the FBI (fig. 2.14).
2-1e Parallel Stories
Some films have multiple narratives
and, unlike the A and B narrative for-
mula, deliberately do not prioritize the
stories. Instead the point of this struc-
ture is to highlight parallel action, to
track several stories simultaneously
and then show how these seemingly
unrelated stories somehow connect. A
2.13 Bonnie discovers that Clyde “ain’t much of a lover boy.” good example of such a film is Steven
Soderbergh’s Traffic (2000), which
follows three distinct narratives: the
story of two Mexican detectives nego-
tiating the treacherous world of gang-
controlled drug running; the story of
two American detectives who arrest
a drug kingpin (who is set up by his
cohorts) and then watch as the king-
pin’s wife takes over the business; and
the story of an ambitious, politically
conservative judge committed to the
party line on fighting the so-called
drug war until his daughter falls into
drug addiction and teaches him that
the war on drugs may well be unwin-
nable (figs. 2.15–2.17).
2.14 The bloody climax of Bonnie and Clyde. In the end, the A story takes By the end of the film we dis-
precedence, and the joy the outlaws find in the B story is short lived. cover that these three stories over-
lap: the corruption of law and order
and it is, in that they get away with the robberies, a story in Mexico and the drug cartels there and elsewhere in
of a series of triumphs. The B story for most of the film Latin America are the source for the drugs peddled by
offers significantly less evidence of success as it chronicles the organization headed by the American-based drug
Clyde’s continued troubles in bed (fig. 2.13). trafficker (and then his wife) and used by the daugh-
At the two-thirds mark of the plot, after a series of ter of the judge. What Soderbergh shows by tracking
capers, Bonnie and Clyde stop to reflect on their handi- these three narratives simultaneously is what the judge
work. Bonnie begins thinking about the future, about finally understands at the end of the film: the war on
going straight, about retiring after one last score. We drugs is a complicated, global phenomenon involving
have seen enough crime films to recognize the meaning peasant farmers, organized gangsters, cops, and finally
of this moment in the A story: such reflection seems a teenage girls—very different players in simultaneous
sure sign they’re about to get caught. It is at this very narratives that depend on each other in complex ways.
moment in the A narrative that Clyde finally succeeds The striking experiment Timecode (2000) uses a
in the B narrative. different system to track multiple narratives. The direc-
We find the lovers post-tryst. “Do you feel like tor Mike Figgis shows four simultaneous stories unrav-
you’re supposed to feel?” he asks. “You did perfect,” she eling in four separate “windows” on screen (fig. 2.18).
replies. “I guess I did,” he beams. As things play out, this The effect is at once visually arresting and a testament to
moment of bliss in the B story proves fleeting as the A our ability as contemporary filmgoers to pay attention
2-1 NArrATIve STrUCTUre 29
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to more than one set of images and
more than one story at once.
2-1f Narrative Time
As discussed the introduction to this
section, there is a distinction between
story (the full set of events that we
piece together as viewers) and plot
(the on-screen events). That distinc-
tion is especially useful when we
analyze how the story is told, which
moments from the story the filmmak-
ers have selected for inclusion in the
film, in what order they occur as the
film unfolds, and finally how much
time it takes for the filmmakers to
reveal these moments on screen.
The term story duration refers to
the elapsed time from the first to the
final events of the narrative. While it
is possible for story and plot to cover
the same time span, typically plot
duration involves a shorter span of
time than story duration. The plot of
Young Adult (Jason Reitman, 2011),
for example, covers a short period in
Mavis Gary’s life at age 37, while the
story extends further back in time to
Mavis’s high school years. A third dis-
tinction, screen duration, refers to the
running time of the film. During the
93 minutes from the opening sequence
to the credits, we see selected moments
from the weeks covered by the plot.
The distinction between story
duration and plot duration is made
clear by what the filmmakers choose
to tell in full and what they choose to
summarize or ignore. For example, the
past that characters bring with them
into a film, what screenwriters call
backstory, is part of the story dura-
tion but may not take up much time in
the plot. In The Maltese Falcon (John
Huston, 1941), the detective Sam
2.15–2.17 The parallel narratives in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic (2000). Spade’s shady past is mentioned but
Soderbergh helps us distinguish the narratives by color-coding them: The never shown. Though little time in the
story set in Mexico is shot in an orange-brown tint. The story of American plot is spent on the topic, it is none-
police in pursuit of the American-based drug lord is cast in yellows and theless important to a full understand-
greens. The judge and his daughter’s story is captured in blues. ing of the story; it provides Spade’s
30 NArrATIve AND GeNre
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complex motivation for solving the
case of his murdered partner.
Filmmakers are constantly bat-
tling against the constraints of the typ-
ical 90- to 120-minute running time
of a feature film and employ strate-
gies of compression, in which scenes
are stripped to their essentials and/
or summarized by familiar “codes.”
A related maxim of screenwriting is
“arrive late; leave early.” Note how
often in films we enter a scene (a con-
versation, a scuffle, a sexual act) after
it has begun and how often we exit
the scene before said action has com-
pletely played out. As filmgoers, we
fill in the beginning and end.
Strategic use of ellipses (the
on-screen omission of story events,
2.18 Four related narratives play out in four distinct “windows” within the as described above) allows films to
frame. Timecode (Mike Figgis, 2000). cover vast amounts of story time—a
life from birth to death in The Curi-
ous Case of Benjamin Button (David
Fincher, 2008), for example. Days,
weeks, months, even years can be dis-
patched with a single cut from a char-
acter looking young to looking old (or
the reverse, as in Benjamin Button).
Ellipses can also represent a gap
in a character’s memory or knowl-
edge, as in The Hangover. Early in the
story, four young men stand on the
roof of a hotel and raise a toast (fig.
2.19). The subsequent scene is of the
morning after, as the characters real-
ize in dramatic fashion the promise of
the film’s title (fig. 2.20). Finding out
story duration The time span encompass-
ing all of the story events.
plot duration The time span encompass-
ing only those story events that are selected
for the plot.
screen duration The running time of
the film.
backstory The past that characters bring
with them into a film.
2.19 and 2.20 An innocent toast and its not so innocent aftermath. ellipses The omission of significant chunks
The abrupt transition signals that all is not well in Todd Phillips’s The of story time in the on-screen plot.
Hangover (2009).
2-1 NArrATIve STrUCTUre 31
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what happened between the two
scenes drives the narrative; this
missing piece of story time holds
the answer to a missing friend’s
whereabouts.
When filmmakers want to
quickly cue the audience to the
passage of time, they may use
intertitles such as “later that
day” and “five years later.” Inter-
titles are examples of nondiegetic
material (figs. 2.21–2.23). The
term is used by film scholars to
denote material derived from out-
side the story world; the Greek
word diegesis refers to the fic-
tional world in which narrative
events occur. (These terms will be
revisited in more detail in chapter
6 on sound.)
Timecode, which we looked
at as an experiment in parallel
narratives (fig. 2.18), also offers a
rare example of a film that unfolds
in real time; the plot duration
corresponds to the screen dura-
tion. All four stories were shot
simultaneously; four cameras in
four locations began rolling and
stopped at exactly the same time,
without cuts. The 1952 western
High Noon is the classic example
of a film that takes place in real
time, as the film tracks the inexo-
rable lead-up to a climactic gun-
fight (fig. 2.24).
More often plot time and
screen time are matched only in
specific scenes to heighten suspense
or to set up a sudden jolt of vio-
lence. In the opening sequence of
intertitle A piece of text inserted into the
film to cue the audience to the passage of
time. Intertitles might also provide dialogue
(in silent films), prologue, or epilogue copy.
nondiegetic A term used to denote 2.21–2.23 At the end of the comedy Chasing Amy (1997), writer-director
material within a film that comes from out- Kevin Smith uses an intertitle to quickly signal the shift from the main charac-
side the world of the story.
ters’ breakup to a brief and bittersweet reunion a year later.
32 NArrATIve AND GeNre
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Alfonso CuarÒn’s Children of Men, for example, we fol-
low the main character Theo through the routine of an
ordinary morning. He buys a cup of coffee, stops to add
a little booze to the drink, and then, just as he is about
to continue, a bomb detonates nearby (figs. 2.25–2.27).
What makes this scene work is the “day-in-a-life” feel
created as events unfold in real time. We watch the scene
much as we would watch the same actions play out in
our everyday lives.
2.24 Plot time and screen time are synchronized as we
wait with our hero, Will Kane (foreground), for the inevi-
table gunfight in High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952).
2.25–2.27 The opening sequence from Alfonso
Cuaròn’s Children of Men (2006) unfolds in real time so
that the sudden detonation of a bomb delivers a jolt to
the audience.
2-2 CHARACTERS
Characters are a key to our emotional and intellectual we see on screen fundamental character types and begin
investment in the story. Because of our identification to appreciate and understand how dialogue and narra-
with and idealization of movie characters, we follow tion are used to reveal character traits, motivations, and
story events with keen interest. As we endeavor to more points of view. Also of import here is the effect movie
complexly analyze the narrative function of these movie stars have on how we appreciate and understand the
characters, we need to begin to recognize in the stories movie characters they portray.
2-2 CHArACTerS 33
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2-2a Character Motivation figure out who they are and why they do what they
do in the film’s story. The key to a deeper understand-
Characters are fundamentally the sum total of external, ing of film characters is to apprehend their motivation,
physical, observable details—appearance, gestures, dia- the proximate cause or explanation for their behav-
logue, and actions. It is from our observation of such ior. This focus on motivation importantly repeats a
superficial and partial information that we begin to process already undertaken by the actors cast to play
these characters, as they too try to
situate the character (via his or her
quirks, behavior, and participation
in the story at hand) with regard to
fundamental desires and dreams.
In Let the Right One In, char-
acter motivation is essential to our
appreciation and understanding of
the film. All of the characters want
something, and when we figure out
what that is, we understand who
these people are and where they
are headed in the world of the film.
We are first introduced to
2.28 Håkan kills a man and then drains his blood. But why? Let the Right
One In (Låt der rätte komma in, Tomas Alfredson, 2008). Oskar, a preadolescent boy, as he
playacts at threatening someone
with a real knife. Who is this strange
child, we ask ourselves, and what is
he planning? We then meet Håkan,
an older man who has moved
into Oskar’s apartment building.
We see him coolly murder a man,
then drain and collect his blood
(fig. 2.28). And we wonder, why is
he doing this? Finally, there is Eli,
the androgynous teenager in what
appears to be Håkan’s care (fig.
2.29). We get only a glimpse of her
at first. But even at first glance, she
2.29 Eli has simple motivations: she needs blood and shelter from the day-
light to survive. is at once fascinating and unusual.
The motivations for these
characters become clear as the
film unspools. Oskar is brutally
bullied at school and dreams of
(but initially is too afraid to seek)
revenge (fig. 2.30). Håkan, we dis-
cover, kills at Eli’s behest. Though
he is an old man, there are hints at
his deep affection for Eli that seem
not exactly parental. Eli is a vam-
pire. Her basic motivation is sim-
ple—she needs blood to live. And
she needs Håkan to get it for her,
2.30 Oskar is tormented at school. His relationship with Eli gives him power if only to keep her from desperate
against the bullies. acts of violence on the streets. Her
34 NArrATIve AND GeNre
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The plot chronicles Håkan’s
exit from Eli’s life and his replace-
ment by Oskar. We know why Oskar
leaves with Eli: she’s his ticket out
of town and away from awful par-
ents and classmates. But we wonder
all the way through the film’s final
scene whether Eli really cares for
Oskar or simply needs him, much as
she once needed Håkan (fig. 2.31).
How we read Eli’s motivation very
much governs how we read the film;
2.31 The final scene shows Oskar tapping k-i-s-s in Morse code on a box it is either an odd little love story or
containing and concealing Eli as he escapes with her. Here he embarks on the the tale of a monster and her piti-
road Håkan has previously traveled. able and willing victim.
Our expectations regarding
character motivation are made
“attraction” to Oskar is more complex; at first she rec- especially clear when they are deliberately subverted,
ognizes his loneliness and isolation—she too is lonely and as in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film Breathless. Patricia,
isolated—but such a recognition may be less a matter of the American student abroad who falls into a romantic
friendship or love than an aspect of her predatory nature. entanglement with a French gangster, seems to act only
on impulse. When she calls the police and turns in her
lover Michel, we have no idea why. In the end as Michel
lies dying in the street, Patricia first appears dismayed
(fig. 2.32), then almost immediately afterward she holds
her head in her hand and looks down at the ground
as if she doesn’t quite understand what has happened
and why (fig. 2.33), even though it was her phone call
that helped the police trap him. Her final gesture is a
look back at the camera (fig. 2.34) that seems to suggest
2.32–2.34 After her lover dies in the street, Patri-
cia looks dismayed and then somewhat confused, then
a bit bored. When she looks directly at the camera, it
denies us any indication as to her motivation. Breath-
less (À bout de souffle, Jean-Luc Godard, 1960).
2-2 CHArACTerS 35
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2-2b Character Types
As we will see in the section on
genre later in this chapter, film nar-
ratives often adhere to established
formulas. If we are watching a
western, for example, we recog-
nize the hero instinctively, just as
we recognize his adversary. Their
different motivations (e.g., to save
the town, to rob a bank) and atti-
tudes (e.g., to protect and serve, to
2.35 Chief Brody, the outsider, is new to Amity Island and afraid of the water. satisfy a desire for more money,
He is the least likely of the three men to kill the shark. Jaws (Steven Spiel- sex, or power at any cost) give the
berg, 1975). narrative shape and coherence. If
a film is about good versus evil, it
helps if characters clearly embody
these characteristics.
Character types need not be so
sharply opposed in order to gen-
erate dramatic tension. In Steven
Spielberg’s Jaws, three men are put
aboard the same boat with the same
assignment: find and kill the shark
before it ruins the summer season in
Amity, a resort town. Drama ensues
as the three men clash in conflicts
2.36 Hooper, the nature-loving scientist. made inevitable by their funda-
mental character differences (figs.
2.35–2.37). That these characters
fit certain familiar types does not
cheapen the story; indeed, wonder-
ing how these men work together
holds our interest and sustains the
suspense of the film.
Recognizable character types
have been an essential aspect of
film narrative since the advent of
cinema. Absent the clues to char-
acter that spoken dialogue can
offer, “stock characters” made
2.37 Quint, the iconoclast seaman, has a singular desire to kill the shark. His the prospect of following silent
character has parallels to Captain Ahab in the novel Moby Dick, including a movies easier. For example, audi-
shared fate. ences attending a screening of
D. W. Griffith’s silent melodrama
that she is looking to us, the filmgoers, for a clue. It's if Way Down East in its initial release in 1920 no doubt
she does not know how or what to feel. Therefore we recognized the drama’s three leads as familiar types:
do not read the scene with her, but rather consider the the country innocent Anna Moore who ventures to
narrative events despite her, in the absence of the cause- the city (fig. 2.38), the womanizing city slicker Lennox
and-effect structure implied when we view action as a Sanderson who leaves her pregnant (fig. 2.39), and the
consequence of character motivation. good-hearted farmer’s son David Bartlett who saves
36 NArrATIve AND GeNre
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2.38 Anna, the girl from the country. Way Down East 2.40 David, the good-hearted country-boy hero.
(D. W. Griffith, 1920).
2.39 Lennox Sanderson, the womanizer. 2.41 Griffith satirizes progressive women by portraying
Anna’s suffragette aunt as a silly eccentric.
the day (fig. 2.40). The film is populated by secondary for Anna. In the end it is hard to miss the Christian par-
characters who also fit into types: the nutty professor, able in play: it is the son’s love and understanding that
the vile busybody, and the silly suffragette. sways the rest of the characters.
Each of these character types in Way Down East The use of character types to fill in the lesser roles
contributes to the film’s larger implications as a social in the drama allows Griffith to comment upon the perils
commentary. First, there is the treatise on the Christian of modernity, another familiar theme. Anna’s suffrag-
virtue of forgiveness, a key theme of many silent film ette aunt may have a big heart, but she is depicted as an
melodramas. Anna is seduced and despoiled by Lennox, eccentric (she wears men’s clothing, for example)—no
but the reasons for her predicament impress none of the doubt Griffith’s comment on what he saw as the comi-
older, righteously old-school characters. We first meet cal notion of women seeking the same rights as men
a local preacher who refuses to baptize Anna's child, (fig. 2.41).
then the boardinghouse proprietor who tosses her out
on the street because she had a baby but no husband, 2-2c Dialogue and Narration
and finally David’s father who quotes scripture as he
too fails to act with compassion and kicks her out into With the advent of “talkies,” filmmakers gained
a raging storm. David, the farmer’s son, goes against his another tool for revealing characters’ personalities,
father’s wishes, assails Lennox, and proclaims his love motivations, and perspectives on the action in the film.
2-2 CHArACTerS 37
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Dialogue—what the characters say within the world
of the story—and narration—commentary from out- CARL
side the story (and therefore nondiegetic)—offer these Shep said you’d be here at 7:30.
kinds of insights. Both are written into the script and What gives, man?
delivered by actors, whose “reading” of the lines affects JERRY
their meaning. We will explore dialogue and narration Shep said 8:30.
in greater depth in chapter 6 on sound, but here we will
focus on their connection to character. CARL
The example that follows is from the script for We been sitting here an hour.
Fargo (1996), written and directed by Joel and Ethan I’ve peed three times already.
Coen. The script excerpt includes some notes on set-
ting and action, but it consists primarily of dialogue. JERRY
The details of what the bar looks like, what songs are I’m sure sorry. I - Shep told me 8:30.
playing, and how the men appear and say their lines It was a mix-up, I guess.
are left for the director, designers, and actors to realize. CARL
It is an adage of screenwriting that there is no inner life Ya got the car?
in a script, but note how well the Coen brothers com-
municate through dialogue and gesture what’s going JERRY
on in the characters’ heads without ever resorting to Yah, you bet. It’s in the lot there.
internal monologue. Brand-new burnt umber Ciera.
Fargo tells the story of a car salesman named Jerry
CARL
who plots and then stages the kidnapping of his wife in Yeah, okay. Well, siddown then.
order to extort ransom money from his wealthy father- I’m Carl Showalter and this is my
in-law, money he needs to cover up his embezzlement of associate Gaear Grimsrud.
dealership funds. The scene in question stages his first
meeting with Carl and Gaear, the men Jerry will hire to JERRY
kidnap his wife. Yah, how ya doin’. So, uh, we all
set on this thing, then?
CARL
-------------------------------------- Sure, Jerry, we’re all set. Why
INT. CHAIN RESTAURANT - NIGHT wouldn’t we be?
The bar is downscale even for this town. JERRY
Country music plays on the jukebox. Yah, no, I’m sure you are. Shep
vouched for you and all. I got
Two men are seated in a booth at the every confidence in you fellas.
back. One is short, slight, youngish.
The other man is somewhat older, and They stare at him. An awkward beat.
dour. The table in front of them is
littered with empty long-neck beer JERRY
bottles. The ashtray is full. . . . So I guess that’s it, then.
Here’s the keys -
Jerry approaches.
CARL
JERRY No, that’s not it, Jerry.
I’m, uh, Jerry Lundegaard –
JERRY
CARL Huh?
You’re Jerry Lundegaard?
CARL
JERRY The new vehicle, plus forty
Yah, Shep Proudfoot said - thousand dollars.
38 NArrATIve AND GeNre
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JERRY half the ransom, forty thousand,
Yah, but the deal was, the car you keep half. It’s like robbing
first, see, then the forty Peter to play Paul, it doesn’t
thousand, like as if it was the make any –
ransom. I thought Shep told you -
JERRY
CARL Okay, it’s - see, it’s not me
Shep didn’t tell us much, Jerry. payin’ the ransom. The thing is,
my wife, she’s wealthy - her dad,
JERRY he’s real well off. Now, I’m in
Well, okay, it’s - a bit of trouble –
CARL CARL
Except that you were gonna be What kind of trouble are you in, Jerry?
here at 7:30.
JERRY
JERRY Well, that’s, that’s, I’m not gonna go
Yah, well, that was a mix-up, then. inta, inta - see, I just need
money. Now, her dad’s real wealthy -
CARL
Yeah, you already said that. CARL
So why don’t you just ask him
JERRY for the money?
Yah. But it’s not a whole pay- FARGO, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen. Published by
in-advance deal. I give you a Faber & Faber (London), 1996.
brand-new vehicle in advance and -
The scene is fairly simple: three people in a room
CARL with something (money) they all want or need. They
I’m not gonna debate you, Jerry. don’t trust each other: Carl is oddly peeved about Jerry’s
late arrival and then overreacts to Jerry’s simple query:
JERRY “. . . we all set on this thing, then?” Gaear’s silence is
Okay. offered in counterpoint to Jerry and Carl’s chatter; he
is frightening in part because he doesn’t speak. His lack
CARL of bluster implies impending action, that he might act
I’m not gonna sit here and debate. without bothering to say anything first.
I will say this though: what Shep At a key moment in the scene Carl is bewildered
told us didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
and asks Jerry, “You want your own wife kidnapped?”
“Yah,” Jerry replies simply. The matter-of-fact dialogue is
JERRY
Oh, no, it’s real sound. It’s offered on the one hand to establish the intellectual level
all worked out. of the characters and on the other to allow us to focus
on a telling exchange of gestures elaborated in the simple
CARL stage direction: “Carl stares. Jerry looks blankly back.”
You want your own wife kidnapped? Throughout Jerry is revealed to be a bumbling weakling;
indeed his repeated apologies (for being late, for being
JERRY misunderstood, for needing the money) do little to instill
Yah. confidence in his adopted role as criminal mastermind.
He may have “every confidence in” Carl and Gaear, but
Carl stares. Jerry looks blankly back.
they (and we) have little reason to have confidence in him.
When Carl states the obvious, that Jerry’s plan
CARL
. . . You - my point is, you pay “doesn’t make any sense,” Jerry replies by stammering
the ransom - what eighty thousand about his rich father-in-law, then remarking: “I’m in a
bucks? - I mean, you give us bit of trouble.” When Carl asks, “What kind of trouble
are you in?” he speaks for us; that is, he states what we
2-2 CHArACTerS 39
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are wondering as well. Jerry continues to stammer: “I’m 2-2d Movie Stars and Screen
not gonna go inta,” then repeating “Now, her dad’s real
wealthy.” Again Carl asks the question that is likely Characters
on our minds, “So why don’t you just ask him for the Unlike the characters in literary works, screen charac-
money?” We are hooked into watching more to find out ters are “embodied”; that is, we do not imagine what
about the problem between Jerry and his father-in-law, they look like from a description, but rather they come
a problem that has put Jerry in a plot with the likes to us in visible, tangible form. We don’t watch scripts,
of Carl and Gaear. It is a simple scene with decidedly after all, we watch movies. In the next chapter, we will
simple dialogue. But it sets the parameters of a narra- examine how actors are dressed and styled to look like
tive that is anything but simple. the characters they play and how they create their char-
There is little physical action in the scene. Jerry acters through performance; here we consider how a
enters the restaurant, finds Carl and Gaear, sits, and then star’s persona merges with the character.
has a brief and unsatisfying conversation with them. But The script for the 1959 film Some Like It Hot
a lot happens. The key to this scene as written is a dra- includes the character of Sugar Kane, a lonely band
matic predicament elaborated in fairly banal dialogue, singer with lousy luck at love. Watching Marilyn Mon-
dialogue that suggests conflicts (between Jerry and his roe play Sugar Kane at once simplifies matters (she gives
father-in-law, between Jerry and his wife, between Jerry the role a physical form and she gives the character a rec-
and two criminals who think he’s an idiot) and reveals ognizable voice) and complicates them (fig. 2.42). Sugar
personalities that will be the key to our appreciation and (as written) and Monroe (as an iconic Hollywood movie
understanding of the film. We know a lot more when we star) combine to create the character in the narrative,
leave this restaurant than when we entered it, and, more and it is difficult for the filmgoer to separate the two. So,
important, we want to know more. as Sugar sings “I’m Through with Love” near the end of
Fargo unfolds without voice-over narration; the the film, it speaks to both Sugar’s heartbreak and Mon-
insights we gain into the characters come from listening roe’s, who as a public figure was famously unlucky at
to and observing them, as is the case with most films.
Some films have a narrator, a person who sets up the
story and comments on the action. As in literature, if
that person is a participant in the story (signaled by
“I”), then his or her commentary is known as first-
person narration. Third-person narrators are unseen
observers and not characters in the story. We will look
at different types of narration in the “Voice Track” sec-
tion of chapter 6 on sound.
A related issue has to do with the larger question of
point of view in film and whether a film (not just the nar-
ration) can be told in the first person. Some film theorists
argue that all cinema is told in the third person; they
view the camera as a narrator and contend that the cam-
era is never actually or literally “I.” Most film professors
opt for a more fluid notion of cinematic narration—that
it is possible for all or part of a story to be limited to the
experiences and awareness of one person.
narrator A person who sets up the story and comments on the
action.
first-person narration Commentary on the film’s action by a 2.42 Marilyn Monroe on the set of Some Like It Hot
character who speaks as “I.” (Billy Wilder, 1959). Seeing her captured here in a
moment of reverie, we can see how singing a song like
third-person narration Commentary on the film’s action by
someone who is not a character in the story and who refers to all of “I’m Through with Love” might speak not only for Sugar
the characters as he, she, or they. Kane, the character she plays in the film, but for Mon-
roe (the movie star, the woman) as well.
40 NArrATIve AND GeNre
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Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones.
For reasons that extend beyond the
character as written, the movie star
makes the role his or hers. Imag-
ine, for example, The Transporter
films with someone else besides
Jason Statham in the lead role. His
character, Frank Martin, as written
is somewhat flat; he spends most
of the films seated at the wheel of
his gorgeous Audi, driving. Sta-
tham gives Frank an identity, one
2.43 Jason Statham as Frank Martin in The Transporter 2 (Louis LeTerrier, tied into the way the actor carries
2005). It’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the part. himself as a movie star (and for-
mer athlete and fashion model),
love. As filmgoers we can’t help but see the movie star in his rugged good looks, even the way he wears his suit
the character and the character in the movie star. Indeed, (fig. 2.43).
in many ways the movie exploits the complication. Film theorists talk about a movie star’s “discrete
The indelible and enduring nature of Monroe’s star- identity,” the public persona—drawn from gossip, self-
dom is at the heart of the 2011 film My Week with Marilyn promotion, and other movie roles—that inevitably leaks
(Simon Curtis). Indeed the film’s narrative is built upon into the portrayal of the fictional characters they portray.
the familiarity of Monroe as a celebrity whose public and In the 1930s and 1940s in Hollywood, movie stars were
private life remains a fascination to many moviegoers. often typecast or pigeonholed; they played the same basic
The film features Michelle Williams in a platinum-blonde character in every one of their films. So, for example, the
wig and skin-tight dresses, speaking in that little-girl-lost actor Errol Flynn played the rebel Robin Hood (fig. 2.44)
whisper that became Monroe’s trademark. The char- and the boxer Gentlemen Jim Corbett—two historical
acter “Marilyn” in the film, then, is a re-presentation characters separated by centuries—much the same way.
of the Marilyn we have come to “know” through her Both characters as played by Flynn are risk takers, swash-
films—Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, bucklers, lovers, and fighters with an indomitable spirit.
1953), The Seven Year Itch (Billy Wilder, 1955), Some Both characters have only a passing relation to the real
Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959), The Misfits (John Hus- historical figures they are based upon but are very much
ton, 1961)—through ruminations on her life on and off tied into Flynn’s discrete identity as a romantic leading
screen (e.g., Norman Mailer’s 1973 biography Marilyn man with a reputation off screen as a lovable rogue.
and Joyce Carol Oates’s historical novel Blonde, first
published in 2000), and the tell-all celebrity gossip that
accompanied her stardom and has endured, astonish-
ingly, ever since. Just as it was difficult to separate the
real Marilyn from the woman up there on screen in Some
Like It Hot, in My Week with Marilyn it is difficult to dis-
tinguish Williams’s characterization of Monroe from the
real thing. The story told in the film depends on Williams’s
evocation of the familiar look and style of Monroe, the
movie star. We thus read the narrative already knowing
the character, constructed as it is from the mythology of
Marilyn Monroe as a troubled, needy young woman con-
sumed by Hollywood stardom. What the film then adds
is nuance to that legend, depicting the actress off screen
as manipulative and ambitious, driven by insecurities so
complex they baffled and frustrated everyone in her life.
Movie stars are often associated with a signa- 2.44 Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood
ture role: Sylvester Stallone as Rocky, for example, or (Michael Curtiz and William Keighley, 1938).
2-2 CHArACTerS 41
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2-3 GENRE
Genre is a French term used widely
in English-language literary and
film criticism. It is an organizing
principle that refers to a kind or
type of work. In film studies, genre
criticism begins with the task of
categorizing a group of films that
share certain narrative elements,
visual style, and/or emotional
effects. A film is perceived to be
a western, a romantic comedy, a
gangster, or a horror film because
it appears to be the same kind or 2.45 Four cowboys meet on a dusty street with a sign for a saloon in the
type of film as others in that genre. background. We recognize from these constituent elements that the film is a
The critical task of grouping western. Tombstone (George P. Cosmatos, 1993).
like works of art into genres dates
to Aristotle’s Poetics, written in 350
B.C. Aristotle’s primary focus in his
discussion of genre was on narra-
tive-based art forms like stage plays
and lyric poetry. He organized
these traditions into two rather
comprehensive categories: com-
edy and tragedy. These two genres,
according to Aristotle, were defined
and distinguished from each other
on two counts: (1) with regard to
constitutive elements (narrative 2.46 Genre defined by its effect: the scary climax of the 1978 horror film
structure, certain key themes and Halloween (John Carpenter).
motifs), and (2) with regard to their
presumed effect on the audience. Our reactions to trag- formulaic narrative elements and/or by their effects on
edy and comedy are distinct and different; we recognize us. We collectively recognize a western, for example,
whether we’ve seen a tragedy or comedy based in part on based on its narrative elements: the characters (cow-
the structure and content of its story and plot and also boys, American Indians, gunslingers, and outlaws), the
with regard to what and how the story makes us feel. setting (the wide-open spaces, the saloon), and certain
Well over 2,000 years later, the same basic distin- narrative events (the inevitable gunplay) (fig. 2.45). We
guishing characteristics are in play when we critically are more apt to recognize a horror film from the effect
discuss motion pictures: We recognize genre films—that the narrative has on us, and how the events and charac-
is, films that can be organized into genres—by their ters create the desired sense of suspense and dread (fig.
2.46). After all, the term horror is derived from words
western A film genre that is recognized and understood based meaning “to shudder” and “to stand on end.”
on its narrative elements: the characters (cowboys, American Indians,
gunslingers, and outlaws), the setting (the wide-open spaces, the
saloon), and certain narrative events (the inevitable gunplay). 2-3a Form and Formula:
horror A film genre that is recognized and understood based on The Western
the effect the narrative has on us, and how the events and characters
create the desired sense of suspense and dread. Westerns are composed of familiar images, sounds, and
stories. They may well be attractive and popular because
42 NArrATIve AND GeNre
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83680_ch02_ptg01_hires_020-053.indd 42 10/17/12 3:01 PM
UNITED ARTISTS / THE KOBAL COLLECTION
2.47 Early western movie star William S. Hart with the 2.48 John Wayne, the quintessential American
director King Baggot on the set of Tumbleweeds (1925). cowboy, in John Ford’s 1939 western Stagecoach.
they are so familiar; we find comfort or pleasure or both of the hero’s quest. Instead they exist as distractions,
in recognition and repetition, and we like to have our as sexual outlets, and as “civilizers” who promise or
expectations satisfied. In an otherwise chaotic world, we threaten to transform the cowboy into a modern mar-
find comfort in the ordered universe of genre fiction. ried man. The very convention of marriage that offers
Because genres hinge on conventions and expecta- a significant rite of passage in modern American life
tions, recognition is a key. We know we’re in a western, for marks the death of the cowboy; “settling down” is
example, even though few of us have ever met a real cow- something he doesn’t or can’t do without hanging up
boy and even though very few filmgoers were alive during his guns and changing his ways.
the time period covered by the genre (roughly 1840–1920; The setting or space of the western is immediately
from the embrace of the notion of Manifest Destiny recognizable on screen: the wide-open prairies with
through the resolution of the Mexican Revolution and mountains looming in the distance, the tumbleweeds, the
so-called Indian Wars). What we recognize then is not a big sky (fig. 2.49). The cowboy is often depicted against
place or story we have experienced first-hand, but instead such a majestic natural backdrop—a lone individual in
a familiar set of images and a tradition of storytelling. an untamed land. Scattered in the wilderness we find
To appreciate and understand the western, we must lonely homesteads and slowly developing towns—
first recognize the constituent elements specific to the tentative attempts to civilize the virgin land. As a conse-
genre. First and foremost we have the cowboy: a man with quence, exteriors tend to dominate the genre, so much
a gun and a horse (fig. 2.47). He is defined less by what so that interiors (the saloon, the hearth) gain unique
he does (for a living, for example) than
what he is (a cowboy) and what he repre-
sents (freedom from material possessions,
freedom from domesticity, freedom from
institutional authority). For filmgoers
overseas, the cowboy became the Ameri-
can par excellence; but for the American
moviegoer, the cowboy is very much a
figure in a popular mythology, an ideal-
ization of masculine behavior in a world
that exists only in the movies (fig. 2.48).
Women also fit into stereotypical or
archetypical roles in the western and as
such tend to be peripheral to the action.
Unlike stories in other heroic genres, in
westerns women are seldom the object 2.49 The space of the western. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956).
2-3 GeNre 43
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83680_ch02_ptg01_hires_020-053.indd 43 10/17/12 3:01 PM
importance. We recognize the space of the western not
because we have been there but because we have seen
these spaces in other movie westerns.
The vast majority of westerns fit into a handful
of basic narrative formulas. The hero is most likely an
outsider or at least he is different from those he ends
up protecting. He is adept at gunplay; he is a survivor
in a ruthless and rugged place. The villains are nearly
as adept, and the struggle between the hero and villain
at once involves the western society (the townsfolk,
the homesteaders) and takes shape without their direct
involvement. The western narrative often comes down
to a struggle between personifications of good and evil.
The hero and his nemesis are more than just two men
with guns facing off to settle some personal dispute. 2.50 The inevitable, climactic gunfight in a dimly lit
Instead, by the time they face off on a dusty street or in saloon: Shane (foreground) faces off against Wilson
a dimly lit saloon, their confrontation comes to embody (background) to settle things once for and all. Shane
larger notions of justice, vengeance, and the necessary (George Stevens, 1952).
victory of good over evil (fig. 2.50).
Indeed, the themes that westerns typically explore a work of fiction, but we rather easily accept this world
can be expressed in terms of competing values or con- on its own terms, with its own rules, characters, and
cepts: progress (or modernity) versus nostalgia, sex ver- plotlines.
sus love, the male bond versus the male ideal of isolation. The answer to the second question regards the curi-
Violence has a specific function in the western as a means ous attraction of things that promise to frighten us, from
of establishing social control that is simple and effective roller coasters to haunted houses. It also regards the pub-
but nonetheless short-lived. Civilization and modernity lic ritual of going to the movies; horror films are built
will, we know, win out in the west; as such the genre is on suspense and shock, both of which depend on audi-
essentially nostalgic . . . a longing for simpler times. ence expectation and succeed once they prompt audience
reaction. Sharing this expectation and reaction with other
2-3b Form and Effect: filmgoers heightens the genre’s inevitable effect.
The stories told in horror movies target a vir-
The Horror Film tual catalogue of human weaknesses and fears (figs.
Horror films hinge upon a predictable 2.51–2.58)—fears of the unknown, of human frailty
reaction to visual, aural, and narrative
elements; we know we’re watching a
horror film because we recognize its
effect on us. Because it so hinges upon
effect, the genre raises two fundamen-
tal questions: First, how can anyone
be frightened by a movie? After all, the
world on screen does not exist. Second,
why would anyone go to a horror film
knowing in advance that he or she will
be horrified, and that the film will likely
prompt an unpleasant reaction such as
disgust, nausea, repugnance, or fear?
The answer to the first question may
be a simple matter of what scholars call
a “willing suspension of disbelief”; we 2.51 The fear of losing control, the fear of going crazy, the fear of
know we are witnesses to the staging of demonic possession: The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973).
44 NArrATIve AND GeNre
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83680_ch02_ptg01_hires_020-053.indd 44 10/17/12 3:01 PM
2.53 The fear of the dark, the fear of getting lost: The
Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo San-
2.52 The fear of others: Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau, chez, 1999).
1922).
(dismemberment, demonic possess-
ions), of others (people unlike us,
people or monsters with unsa-
vory origins from strange places
with strange habits), or of disease
and death (zombies existing in
a permanent disease state, vam-
pires existing somehow between
conventional notions of life and
death). Horror need not involve the
supernatural. Common phobias
are often at the heart of the matter:
fear of heights, of enclosed spaces,
of strangers, of losing control (e.g.,
2.54 The fear of disease and death: Let the Right One In (Låt der rätte komma in, demonic possession), of getting lost
Tomas Alfredson, 2008). in the woods. Also in play is the
larger matter of crime and punish-
ment: sex outside of marriage and
its punishment in teen horror films,
science messing with God’s work of
creation in the many Frankenstein
films, and fears of our own nature
or psychology (that we may be
capable of some hideous act, that a
monster resides inside us waiting to
be awakened or released) as in the
classic horror story Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde, which has been made
and remade on screen several times.
Finally, horror often hinges upon a
belief in bad luck or fate, the fun-
damental notion that pretty much
2.55 The fear of social transgression, of growing up too fast, of risky sex: anything could happen to anyone
Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978). at any time.
2-3 GeNre 45
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83680_ch02_ptg01_hires_020-053.indd 45 10/17/12 3:01 PM
what is entertaining about these
films. Also popular today are hor-
ror parodies—the Scream films for
example, or the Scary Movie fran-
chise, that poke fun at the genre’s
conventions. Because these paro-
dies can elicit fear and laughter at
the same time, they prompt us to
ask if we have somehow equated
being horrified with being amused,
and to consider what this might
say about the modern condition.
2-3c The Social
Function of Genre
A number of film historians, crit-
ics, and theorists contend that the
primary function of genre is to
2.56 The fear of science. Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935).
offer a familiar narrative frame for
a contemporary social commen-
tary. As such, genre films function
much as myths do: they translate
lived experience into stories that
help us understand ourselves—our
aspirations, our longing, our strug-
gle with the essential conflicts and
paradoxes of contemporary life.
To see how this works, let’s
look at the two genres discussed
in detail previously: westerns and
horror films. Though westerns are
set in a specific historical place and
time in the distant past, at stake are
fairly universal themes: good versus
evil, family versus work, civiliza-
tion versus wilderness. Genre critics
contend that the conflict between
cowboys and American Indians
we see in these films tells us less
about nineteenth-century Manifest
2.57 The fear of our own worst instincts: Is there something inside of us that Destiny and the real Indian Wars
can be awakened and exploited? The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, than about race in contemporary
1919). America. This is certainly clear in
John Ford’s 1956 film The Search-
A close look at twenty-first-century horror films ers, released just two years after the landmark Supreme
such as Saw and Hostel suggests that we’re a lot harder Court case Brown v. Board of Education that mandated
to scare than we used to be; filmmakers now go to the racial integration of American schools. The film’s
gruesome extremes to deliver thrills. It is fair to wonder most adept cowboy is Ethan Edwards, a racist. He
46 NArrATIve AND GeNre
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83680_ch02_ptg01_hires_020-053.indd 46 10/17/12 3:01 PM
the single line of dialogue “Let’s
go home, Debbie,” reveals the
disconnect between his previous
statements about race and his nec-
essary actions as a western hero
(fig. 2.59). The Searchers is osten-
sibly about a cowboy and a band
of renegade American Indians, but
its narrative attention to race had
a much more modern referent. In
the liberal fantasy evinced by this
genre narrative, Ethan discovers
the folly of racism.
Screenwriters and directors
also turned to genre films in the
2.58 The fear of bad luck: “There is no coincidence,” a gypsy fortune teller mid-twentieth century as a way
informs Lawrence Talbot, “only fate . . . .” The Wolfman (Joe Johnston, 2010).
to comment on the Hollywood
blacklist, which they were forbid-
den to address directly. These films
undertakes the search for his teenage niece Debbie, who offered a metaphorical, as opposed to literal, attack
has been kidnapped by the Comanche war chief Scar. on the industrywide ban (from roughly 1947 through
Ethan’s motivation, initially at least, is not to execute 1959) on the employment of over 300 writers, direc-
her rescue but to put her out of her misery, to kill her tors, producers, and actors suspected of having commu-
and in doing so save her from the shame of miscegena- nist political sympathies. In High Noon, for example,
tion. Along the way we get several glimpses at Ethan’s the hero Will Kane refuses to turn his back on the town
unreasoned hatred of Native Americans in general. he has sworn to protect, even though the folks he pro-
The film ends as Ethan finally finds Debbie after tects may not be worth the trouble (fig. 2.60). At one
killing Scar’s band of renegades. At the moment when point a character remarks to Kane, “This is no time for
we (and she) fear the worst, he has a brief but none- a civics lesson,” but that’s precisely what the film offers.
theless highly sentimentalized change of heart. The The cowboy hero is true to genre form: he believes that
image of Ethan lifting Debbie over his head and then a man is only as good as his word. But much as this
letting her drop lovingly into his arms, punctuated by philosophy fits the genre formula, it was a profoundly
resonant position to take in 1952,
given the various efforts afoot to
get Hollywood talent to inform on
one another.
A less subtle genre reframing of
the blacklist can be found in Nich-
olas Ray’s 1954 western Johnny
Guitar. The film begins with a
lynch mob, a not unusual story ele-
ment for a western, but Ray uses
this motif several times in the film
to reveal the essential injustices—
invasion of privacy, guilt by innu-
endo, loss of life or livelihood—
that occur whenever a mob smells
blood. The film climaxes with
2.59 The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) is clearly about race and racism but the interrogation of a young out-
not necessarily, or not only, about cowboys and Indians. law named Turkey, who is beaten
2-3 GeNre 47
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83680_ch02_ptg01_hires_020-053.indd 47 10/17/12 3:01 PM
into falsely implicating the film’s
heroine, a businesswoman named
Vienna, in a bank robbery (fig.
2.61). While the coercive tactics
used in service of the blacklist
stopped short of physical violence,
the parallels are clear.
The various fears that lay at the
heart of horror film narratives—
fear of the dark, fear of strang-
ers, fear of death and disease, and
so on—may also allude to social
issues. For example, Nosferatu
depicts the vampire as an unwanted
immigrant whose arrival poses a
sexual and biological threat to Ger-
many: he has designs on the very
flower of German womanhood,
and he has brought with him a con-
tagion that ravages the population
2.60 By the end of High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952), the strong and silent (fig. 2.52). In 1922, when the film
cowboy is exhausted by the burden of being a hero in such a cowardly and
treacherous town. The film is set in the Wild West, but the town is clearly meant was released, there were political
to represent Hollywood during the blacklist. and social movements in Germany,
including the nascent Nazi Party,
demonizing foreigners, immigrants,
and Jews. More modern examples
of horror films touching on social
issues are the teen horror films
beginning in the 1970s with Carrie
and Halloween that exploit basic
fears (of the unknown, of mon-
strous evil and psychopathology) to
focus our attention on more general
adolescent worries about bullying
and unprotected sex.
Carrie tells the story of a lonely
high school girl who is tortured by
her classmates and by her fanati-
cally religious mother. Carrie’s
role as an outcast is made worse
by the fact that there’s something
clearly “different” about her. It is
of course fair to ask, what high
school student doesn’t at some
point feel “different?” But Carrie
2.61 Turkey is interrogated in Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954). He is really different from her class-
betrays Vienna to save himself. The mob hangs him anyway . . . no doubt an mates: she’s telekinetic. She can,
allegory for what was happening to those hauled in front of the committees when angry, make objects move,
charged with enforcing Hollywood’s blacklist. even fly through the air.
48 NArrATIve AND GeNre
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83680_ch02_ptg01_hires_020-053.indd 48 10/17/12 3:01 PM
and her body clenched in psy-
chic rage, she lays waste to the
entire school (fig. 2.62). A wish-
fulfillment allegory for every per-
son who has ever been bullied or
humiliated and a cautionary tale
for the popular set, Carrie deftly
appealed to the anxieties and
fears of adolescents about inter-
personal relationships and the
hormonal nightmare of adoles-
cent sexuality.
In Halloween we again focus
on the downside of teen sexual-
ity, here policed by an irrational,
super- or sub-human violence (fig.
2.62 Carrie (screen right), the girl everybody loves to pick on, gets her revenge
on her teachers and fellow students (screen left) in the film adaptation of 2.55). The film poses a simple nar-
Stephen King’s horror story about bullying and sexuality among small town rative: if you have sex, you die. The
teenagers. Carrie (Brian DePalma, 1976). link that Halloween established
between teen sex and irrational
violence became the hallmark of a
The torments that she suffers from her bullying new subgenre, the slasher film. Not only do these films
classmates finally trigger within Carrie a power that adhere to genre convention by successfully scaring audi-
no one, not even she, foresees at the beginning of the ences, they also deliver a very contemporary, cautionary
movie. In the film’s climactic scene, Carrie’s anger message about the perils of teen sexuality (STDs, AIDS,
and humiliation at a final, horrifying insult—a bucket unwanted pregnancies), suggesting a cosmic payback
of pig’s blood dumped on her head during a school for the sexual revolution of the late sixties and early
dance—propels her over the edge. Eyes popping out seventies.
2-3 GeNre 49
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83680_ch02_ptg01_hires_020-053.indd 49 10/17/12 3:01 PM
cHaPter SUMMarY
When we analyze a film’s narrative, we look at the ways that events are sequenced and connected, how narrative time
operates at various levels, and how characters function and are developed through dialogue as well as action.
2-1 Narrative StrUctUre understand the inner lives of characters through their
expression of these details.
Learning Outcome: Recognize and analyze the narrative
structure of a film. • Recognizable character types have been an essential
aspect of film narrative since the advent of cinema. If
• Narrative structure encompasses both the full set of we are watching a western, for example, we recognize
events that we piece together as viewers (the story) the hero instinctively, just as we recognize his adversary.
and the events that are presented in the film (the plot).
In other words, the plot is a particular selection and • Dialogue, what the characters say within the world of
arrangement of events from the story. the story, and narration, commentary from outside the
story, often guide our reading of and feelings about
• There is a distinction between plot order, the sequence characters and their roles in the larger narrative.
of events adopted in the telling of the tale, and story
order, which refers to the chronological sequence of • Unlike the characters in literary works, screen characters
narrative events. are embodied; that is, we do not imagine what they
look like from a description, but rather they come to
• The three-act structure is a common mode for build- us in visible, tangible form. Movie stars complicate this
ing a narrative arc or shape. In act 1 expectations are phenomenon as we consider their public persona and
raised. In the second act expectations are confounded. their roles in previous films whenever we see them on
And in the third act expectations are resolved (requited, screen.
dismissed, found to be silly), ideally in a mildly surprising
fashion. 2-3 GeNre
• The three-act formula roughly matches the hero narra-
tive. This paradigm, which has roots in Greek mythol- Learning Outcome: Distinguish and discuss the concept
of genre with regard to the structure and effect of film
ogy, involves three stages: the hero ventures forth, he narrative.
faces a trial, and in the end he returns home having
learned something from his journey. • Genre is an organizing principle that refers to a kind or
• Many film narratives employ a dual structure: what type of work. In film studies, genre refers to a group of
screenwriters call A and B, or kernel and satellite, stories. films that share certain narrative elements, visual style,
This formula prioritizes one of the narratives but simul- and/or emotional effects.
taneously tracks a second story. • Genre offers a familiar narrative frame for a contem-
• Story duration refers to the elapse of time from the first porary social commentary. Many genre films function
to the final events relevant to the tale being told. Plot much as myths do: they translate lived experience into
duration is composed of selected stretches of story stories that help us understand ourselves—our aspira-
duration—a highlight reel of sorts. A third distinction, tions, our longings, our struggles with the essential
screen duration, regards the passage of time involved conflicts and paradoxes of contemporary life.
in the screening of the film.
2-2 cHaracterS
Learning Outcome: Understand and appreciate the
narrative function of movie characters and movie stars.
• Our understanding of film characters is mostly based
on external, physical, observable details: appearance,
gestures, dialogue, actions. Actors endeavor to help us
50 NArrATIve AND GeNre
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83680_ch02_ptg01_hires_020-053.indd 50 10/17/12 3:01 PM
FOCUS on Story and Genre: Double Indemnity
reading a movie script reminds us that the mode of telling that story on screen—the images and sounds—can
only be approximated or suggested by the written word. With that caveat, we will look at an excerpt from the
screenplay for Billy Wilder’s 1944 crime film Double Indemnity. It is the climactic scene of the movie where the
insurance man Walter confronts the treacherous femme fatale Phyllis. They have conspired to kill her husband
for an insurance payoff, but after that deed was performed, Phyllis has played Walter for a sucker, a fairly
typical 1940s crime film plotline.
earlier in the film, Walter compared acting out a murder to riding on a trolley . . . that when two people
conspire to commit such a crime they need to stay on the trolley and stick by one another (and one another’s
stories) to the bitter end. Both characters have gotten off the trolley at this point. Note how the hard-boiled
dialogue maintains the noir, crime-film milieu and yet also manages to pack an emotional punch.
Phyllis just stares at him. He goes quietly over
to the window and shuts it and draws the curtain.
Phyllis speaks to his back:
The simple action of turning his back
to her heightens the suspense—we’ve PHYLLIS
seen her hide a pistol under the seat (her voice low and urgent)
cushion of her chair. Walter!
Walter turns, something changes in his face. There
is the report of a gun. He stands motionless for
a moment, then very slowly starts towards her.
We know that Phyllis has shot Walter CAMERA IS OVER HIS SHOULDER AT Phyllis as she
without ever seeing her fire the gun. stands with the gun in her hand. Walter stops
We see events unfold first by seeing after he has taken a few steps.
Walter’s face and then from a shot of
Phyllis holding the gun from Walter’s
point of view. The suspense builds as WALTER
we wonder if she will fire again.
What’s the matter? Why don’t you shoot
again? Maybe if I came a little closer?
Tough guy banter: an element of the Walter takes a few more steps towards her and
crime genre. He is angry and taunting stops again.
her.
WALTER (cont’d.)
Another pregnant pause that builds
suspense. How’s that? Do you think you can do it
now?
Despite a bullet in the gut, more tough
guy banter. Phyllis is silent. She doesn’t shoot. Her
expression is tortured. Walter goes on until he is
She is not acting the cold-hearted close to her. Quietly he takes the gun out of her
femme fatale now. We, like Walter, unresisting hand.
want to know why.
FOCUS ON STOrY AND GeNre: DouBle INDeMNITy 51
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83680_ch02_ptg01_hires_020-053.indd 51 10/17/12 3:01 PM
WALTER (cont’d.)
Why didn’t you shoot, baby?
Phyllis puts her arms around him in complete
A key gesture that signals her surrender.
character’s third act change of heart.
WALTER (cont’d.)
Don’t tell me it’s because you’ve been
Given Phyllis’s prior deceptions, we in love with me.
too wonder if she is pretending.
PHYLLIS
No. I never loved you, Walter. Not you
Is she telling the truth? Her admission or anybody else. I’m rotten to the
of guilt makes the change of heart heart. I used you, just as you said.
convincing to us, if not to Walter. That’s all you ever meant to me—until
a minute ago. I didn’t think anything
like that could ever happen to me.
WALTER
I’m sorry baby. I’m not buying.
PHYLLIS
I’m not asking you to buy. Just hold me
close.
Walter draws her close to him. She reaches up to
his face and kisses him on the lips. As she comes
The kiss does not lead to reconcili- out of the kiss there is realization in her eyes
ation, as it would in a romance. It is that this is the final moment.
important that she learns that she
hasn’t gotten away with murder. WALTER
Goodbye baby.
Out of the shot the gun explodes once, twice …
Predictably, closure is attained when
the criminals are punished (they
both die). The mild surprise of the DOUBLE INDEMNITY: THE COMPLETE SCREENPLAY, Billy Wilder and Raymond
third act is that Walter is the one who Chandler. University of California Press, 2000.
kills Phyllis.
52 NArrATIve AND GeNre
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83680_ch02_ptg01_hires_020-053.indd 52 10/17/12 3:01 PM
ANALYZE NARRATIvE ANd GENRE
Use these questions to analyze how the basic elements of narrative and genre contribute to the form and meaning
of a film.
• Film narratives often refer directly or indirectly to a contemporary issue. Does the film you are analyzing refer to a
larger political, social, or economic reality?
2-1 Narrative • Does the plot order match the story order? If not, list the differences and discuss
StrUctUre how these changes from story to plot order contribute to the narrative.
• Briefly summarize the arc or shape of the narrative. Can you organize the events into
a three-act structure? Can you identify a so-called narrative fix, or central conflicts
that create the drama in the story? Is closure accomplished?
• Does the story adhere to the hero narrative proposed by Joseph Campbell?
• Does the film have discernable A and B (or kernel and satellite) stories, or does it
have parallel narratives? If so, how do these stories relate to one other?
• What parts of the story have been left out of the plot? How do the omissions con-
tribute to the telling of the film’s story?
2-2 cHaracterS • How would you describe each character’s motivations? How does his or her motiva-
tion contribute to his or her development as a character? How does his or her moti-
vation contribute to the telling of the film’s story? Are any character’s motivations
unclear or surprising and, if so, how does this questioning of character motivation
contribute to the telling of the film’s story?
• Do any of the film’s characters fall into discernable types (e.g., the all-American hero,
the nutty professor)? If so, how are these types used in the telling of the film’s story?
• Focus on a scene involving a dialogue between two or more characters. What does
the dialogue tell you about the characters?
• Are any of the characters played by a movie star? If so, how does the movie star’s
discrete identity—his or her biography and previous film roles—affect your reading
of the film character and the film as a whole?
2-3 GeNre • Select a genre film to analyze. What elements of story, plot, character, setting and/
or emotional effect are associated with that genre?
• How are conventions and expectations fulfilled by the movie? Are any genre con-
ventions tweaked or thwarted, offered in variation, or contradicted?
• Is the genre narrative used to offer a social commentary?
ANALYZe NArrATIve AND GeNre 53
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83680_ch02_ptg01_hires_020-053.indd 53 10/17/12 3:01 PM
`
3 Mise-en-scène
TOUCHSTONE PICTURES/THE KOBAL COLLECTION/ANTONELLO, PHILIPPE
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004), production design by Mark Friedberg
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83680_ch03_ptg01_hires_054-083.indd 54 10/25/12 8:23 AM
Mise-en-scène
LEARNING
OUTCOMES
After reading this chapter, you should
be able to do the following:
3-1 Describe the function
of set design in the
ost movie projects begin with a story. The
screenplay fleshes out that story and offers visual language of
a blueprint from which the filmmakers will a film.
work. The challenge for the production design 3-2 Analyze costumes,
M team is to create what is placed before the makeup, and hair with
camera—the film’s mise-en-scène. Roughly translated as “put- regard to character
ting into the scene,” for most scholars mise-en-scène refers to development and
the set, lighting, costumes, makeup, hair, and the position of the visual style.
actors. Some film theorists use the term more broadly to include
camera work as well, which is the subject of our next chapter. 3-3 Analyze blocking and
Mise-en-scène is the responsibility of the production design- performance with
ers and set builders and dressers, hair and makeup departments, regard to design and
the cinematographer (who supervises the lighting of the film), narrative.
and the director (who leads the entire production). We will take
a close look at the kinds of decisions that they make so that you 3-4 Recognize how lighting
can analyze how mise-en-scène contributes to the visual style schemes contribute to
and story content of a film. aspects of design and
narrative, mood, and
meaning.
PLAY VIDEO ICON: This icon
signals that a corresponding video clip
is available in the eBook. The eBook
can be accessed at cengagebrain.com.
mise-en-scène Roughly
translated from the French, “putting
into the scene.” Mise-en-scène is
composed of the set and props, the
look of the characters (costumes,
makeup, and hair), dramatic staging
(the blocking of characters as they
move about the set), and the lighting
(including the position, intensity, and
balance of the lights).
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83680_ch03_ptg01_hires_054-083.indd 55 10/17/12 2:14 PM
MAKING MOVIES
MARK FRieDBeRG on pRoDuction DesiGn
Mark Friedberg is a Hollywood production designer who has
© 2014 Cengage Learning, All Rights Reserved directors. His design credits include The Ice Storm (Ang Lee,
worked with many of contemporary cinema’s most interesting
1997), Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002), The Life Aquatic
with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004), Broken Flowers (Jim
Jarmusch, 2005), and Across the Universe (Julie Taymor, 2007).
Friedberg won a 2011 Emmy for outstanding art direction on
Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes).
Q1: What exactly does a Later the costume designer, the story stops and the world of the
production designer do? lighting designer, and then the audience begins is finite. In the
gaffer weigh in. The first order of theater your perspective stays the
A: The production designer business is to determine the movie’s same because the relationship of
is responsible for imagining, visual language. Is the film to be your seat to the stage is fixed. The
finding, and/or creating the world stylized or realistic? What will the theatrical viewpoint is your own but
in which the characters live. images we make look like? Will they in a film you can see from various
This work is broken down into be colorful, stark, textured, modern, characters’ points of view. Another
many components and handled rustic? As technology advances, major difference is scale. You can
by different departments that sketching has become more and contrast a huge bird’s-eye view
report directly to the production more reliant on Photoshop where with a macro close-up. A small
designer: the art department, the we are able to render three- detail can be shot in close-up and
construction and paint departments, dimensional digital models and when projected be seen 80 feet
the set decoration department, the preview angles and lighting and set long; it can possess monumental
property department, the locations dressing options. importance.
department, and the special effects
department. Today many production Q4: Has your experience as a
designers work closely with the Q3: While stage plays ask the designer enabled you to develop
visual effects department so that audience to imagine what a theater a signature style? Or is production
their work lives within the overall set suggests—we see a couch design all about physically
design of the film. and table and we imagine a living realizing a director’s imagined
room, for example—movie sets for
Q2: Would you talk a bit about the most part re-create the fictional world?
the process (from sketch to world in more realistic detail. Are A: The production designer’s
realization) of your work? there fundamental differences responsibility is to make worlds.
A: The production designer is between designing sets for the We do that by best fitting our
decisions into the visual language
often the first hire after the line stage and for the screen? developed with the director and
producer and it’s in that embryonic A: Theater can tend to be a more cinematographer. Having said that,
time in the production that the first poetic presentation of the world. In no two designers would render the
conceptual discussions of the look theater, the stage designer makes same set for the same film.
of the film occur. This discussion the frame. The shape of the story
grows upon the arrival of the world and its intersection with the
cinematographer as the camera audience are defined in the set LinK to tHe FuLL inteRVieW
work is added to the conversation. design. Where the world of the http://cengagebrain.com
56 MIsE-En-scènE
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3-1 THE SET
While stage plays ask the audience to imagine what a
theater set suggests—we see a couch and table and we
imagine a living room, we see a mock-up of a building
in the background and we recognize a street scene—
movie sets for the most part re-create locations in more
realistic detail and ask that we imagine instead what it
might be like to be in this apparently real living room
or street. The set might be constructed on a production
soundstage, where everything can be controlled for
optimal film and sound recording, or it might be located
on a real site outside of the production studio (result-
ing in location shooting). The set takes shape as a col-
laboration among the art department, the construction
and paint departments, the set decoration department,
the property department, the locations department, and 3.1 A preliminary sketch for the lobby set in Grand
in modern moviemaking the special effects department. Hotel (Edmund Goulding, 1931).
The set plays a significant role in how we read a
scene, offering useful information regarding time, place,
social class, and even the mental state of the charac-
ters. In addition, the set affects how the actors behave
because it defines the space within which they operate.
The set also affects where the camera and sound record-
ing equipment can be placed, a practical detail that can
have an enormous impact on the framing of the shot, as
we will see in the following chapter.
3-1a From the Drawing Board
to the Screen: Set Design
Sets are sketched out by hand, previsualized on special-
ized computer programs, or modeled (built in minia-
ture) well in advance of production. As the sets evolve
on the “drawing board,” the director and designers 3.2 A second sketch highlights the scale and scope of
work out the visual language of the film, making deci- the proposed set.
sions, for example, about the color palette, the choice of
patterns and materials, the scale of rooms and furnish- include a tiled floor, glass doors, Art Deco furnishings,
ings, and the space for cameras and lighting. Once the and the arced reception desk at which much of the early
sketches and models are approved, a myriad of artists action in the film takes place (figs. 3.1 and 3.2).
and builders undertake the set’s construction.
A particularly evocative use of soundstage set design movie set Most often refers to a set constructed on a studio lot or
can be found in the 1931 film Grand Hotel. The MGM soundstage. Also used more generally to refer to any location, real or
studio set was built to replicate an opulent Berlin hotel constructed, where filming takes place.
frequented by Europe’s upper classes in the last days soundstage Looking much like an airplane hangar, a soundstage
before the fall of the Weimar Republic and the transition is a windowless, soundproofed shooting environment.
into Nazi Germany. The original design sketches suggest location shooting The filming of a scene in a found location
a circular space that creates the illusion of greater size rather than in a constructed set.
(and enables panoramic moving camera shots). Details
3-1 THE sET 57
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In a production still taken during the filming of one
of the early scenes in Grand Hotel, we can begin to see
how the sketches are translated into the final look of
the picture (fig. 3.3). The space occupied by the charac-
ters, which in the shot from the film appears to be the
full three-dimensional space of the Grand Hotel lobby,
is on the actual set relatively small. Metonymy is the
rule here, which is to say that filmmakers use a part
(the narrowly viewed constructed space of the set) to
suggest the whole (the larger space in which the story
takes place). We see two men walking towards a shop
in the hotel lobby (fig. 3.4), but we are meant to imag-
ine a larger space as a bellhop in the foreground seems
headed for a part of the lobby not seen in the frame. 3.3 A bird’s-eye view of the lobby set in Grand Hotel.
Many of the set’s details—the tiled floor, glass doors, Note how little of the space on the MGM soundstage
Art Deco furnishings, and the arced reception desk— is used in the shot and how much is occupied by the
serve as well to suggest the whole of the hotel lobby. production crew and equipment.
The hotel in the film is meant to exist in a real city,
Berlin, and while most of the action takes place inside,
the vast glass doors of the set allow for shots showing
some characters peering into the hotel space (fig. 3.5)
while other characters move freely between the interior
of the hotel and exterior space of the city. Because this
is an indoor set in Los Angeles and not a real hotel on
a city street in Berlin, the exterior of the hotel is implied
or suggested; there is in reality no street but instead just
more soundstage on the other side of the glass doors. No
doubt the glass enhances the illusion of real exterior city
space. And it also supports a larger class-distinct drama
in play in the film: that there are those wealthy enough to
occupy the space inside of the hotel and others who, on
the other side of the glass, must watch from a distance.
3.4 In film production, a small portion of a set can
3-1b Sets on Location imply a larger, full-scale space, as in this shot from
Grand Hotel.
Real locations—both exterior and interior—can lend a
degree of realism to a film. Like Grand Hotel, the 1998
thriller Run Lola Run is set in Berlin, but the Lola film-
makers opted to shoot on the city’s streets rather than on
a soundstage (fig. 3.6). The location shots quickly estab-
lish the locale and also the trajectory of the drama: Lola
must run from one end of Berlin to the other in order
to rescue her wayward boyfriend, who has lost money
that belongs to some pretty rough characters. The film
poses three distinct outcomes all set on the same recog-
nizable streets, each one dependent on a fateful move or
moment in time wasted or saved during Lola’s run.
metonymy A type of metaphor in which a thing is represented
through one of its attributes. Most often this rhetorical form uses a 3.5 Outside looking in. The suggestion of street space
part to signify the whole, e.g., “the crown” to signify royalty. on the studio set allows for an important message about
social class in Grand Hotel.
58 MIsE-En-scènE
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One popular formula for using
locations is to establish place with
real exteriors and then cut to inte-
riors on the studio soundstage or in
a different real location. When we
see a real exterior and then cut to an
interior, the implication is clear; we
have moved inside the building we
have just seen. Whether or not the
interior we see is really inside that
specific building is not, for the film-
goer at least, important or relevant
because continuity between the two
sets has been established by the logi-
3.6 Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998) rather depends on its exterior setting: cal link between the two shots.
the recognizable Berlin streets that stage Lola’s race against time to save When Lola dashes into a bank in
her boyfriend. The location scouts clearly factored in how this specific street a desperate attempt to get help from
corner might look in the shot described in the script; the train that speeds by her estranged father, we first see her
screen right offers a neat match for Lola’s run around the curved street below. approach a real building with a real
sign that reads “Deutsche Transfer”
on a real city street (fig. 3.7). When we
cut to Lola inside, we assume she has
entered the building we have just seen
(fig. 3.8). In actuality, the bank exte-
rior is that of a government building
on Berlin’s historic Bebelplatz and the
interior is in city government offices
on the Kurfursterdamm. We believe
that the interior and exterior are the
same place because of the logic of
the sequence and because the sets are
convincingly dressed.
The overall feeling of authen-
ticity in Run Lola Run may well be
enhanced by the location work and
real sets, but, ironically, as a native
Berliner would no doubt know, Lola’s
run does not make much geographical
sense. The locations used do not track
any logical route but rather were cho-
sen for aesthetic reasons. As filmgoers
we buy into the fiction of a linear run
from point A to point B because the
location work, sets, and editing (the
subject of chapter 5) convince us that
the space of the narrative is real.
3-1c Sets and Milieu
3.7 and 3.8 Lola approaches the Deutsche Transfer Bank and then, in what Sets establish milieu, the place and
seems like the inside of that building, she attempts to steal 100,000 DM. The time of the film. Whether the milieu
exterior and interior sets are real all right, but neither is a bank. is a specific historical setting, in the
3-1 THE sET 59
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designer and art director establish
the film’s world of high society in
late-nineteenth-century New York
in an early scene of an annual ball
in the Beauford family home (fig.
3.9). This exquisitely furnished man-
sion with its lavish fine art collection
telegraphs the wealth of its owners
and communicates their refined taste
and attention to appearances, values
that become important to the central
3.9 Attention to historical detail is crucial in so-called period pieces like conflict of the story. The Beauford
The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993). Note that the painting in home’s interior was not a wholly
the background resembles the costuming and staging of the characters built set but a real place, the National
posed in the foreground, a clever visual move that furthers the notion of Arts Club dressed to look like the
authenticity. family home it once was. Dressed
and thus reconsidered, the National
Arts Club lends an aura of realism
to the setting, but it also challenged
the filmmakers to move through a
space that could not be structurally
reconfigured (torn down and rebuilt
to suit camera work and lighting).
Sets can establish an authentic
milieu while offering a more vivid ver-
sion of the real thing. In Billy Wilder’s
1960 melodrama The Apartment, the
film’s unlikely hero, C. C. Baxter, is
3.10 The corporate workplace circa 1960 in The Apartment (Billy Wilder, a middle manager for an insurance
1960). No wonder C. C. Baxter, the film’s central character, is willing to do company. He works along with other
almost anything to get his own office. such white-collar workers in a huge
common room, a movie set with row
present day and in a recognizable space, or in some fan- after row of identical workstations (fig. 3.10). While
tastic, invented locale, as filmgoers our first (and sur- the set may have struck 1960s audiences as a true rep-
est) key to the environment, geography, and basic rules resentation of an office space, the tight arrangement of
in play (e.g., realism, science fiction, or fantasy) come the desks, low overhead lights, and chaotic placement
from our understanding of the film’s sets. of the actors was deliberately designed to be unsettling.
Sets play a particularly important role in films that We can appreciate Baxter’s desire to move out of this
endeavor to reproduce and re-create a specific histori- space and into his own office—a desire so strong that
cal setting, so-called period pieces. In such films, set he makes a corrupt bargain with his boss in order to
design must convince filmgoers that the constructed get it.
space accurately reproduces a specific time and place. While some sets aim to re-create real worlds from
Though realism may be a misleading term to use here, the past or present, many other films use sets to estab-
since the space itself is fabricated, the effect should on lish imaginary places. The filmmakers establish a “cre-
some significant level appear realistic. For example, ative geography” in which various sets and design
in Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Edith Wharton’s details suggest a complete if not in the strictest sense of
1920 novel The Age of Innocence, the production the term “real” space. The fantastic dining hall, class-
rooms, and dormitories created for the Harry Potter
period piece A film set in the past, often characterized by lavish series match descriptions known to the avid fans of
set design and costuming. J. K. Rowling, for whom accuracy to the original is
essential (figs. 3.11–3.13).
60 MIsE-En-scènE
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fabricated to fill the space occupied
by the fixed background color. When
the images are put together we have
the semblance of a film set, one in
which no actor (indeed no human
being) has ever set foot.
For one of the most resonant
images in Peter Jackson’s remake of
King Kong, the actress Naomi Watts
was filmed in front of a green screen.
Background images of New York City
and the CGI version of the giant ape
King Kong were added after the fact
(figs. 3.14 and 3.15).
Even simple logistical problems
on constructed sets can be facilitated
by green screen work. In a sequence
in Star Trek, we see Spock leave one
deck, enter an elevator, and then exit
onto the bridge of the Enterprise. As
we watch the sequence in the com-
pleted film, it appears to feature three
distinct sets, but it’s really just one. As
Spock enters the elevator, he is shot in
front of a green screen (fig. 3.16). We
then cut to the interior of the elevator,
which is not an operating lift; it’s just a
mock-up at one end of the same bridge
set. To simulate movement in the ele-
vator and to imply Spock’s transition
from one interior location to another,
there is a slow camera move of about
180 degrees. When the door to the ele-
3.11–3.13 Three sets from the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sor- vator swings open, we see Spock exit
cerer’s Stone (Chris Columbus, 2001), the first in the Harry Potter series. onto the bridge, a physical space the
actor has, in reality, never left.
3-1d Sets and Special Effects 3-1e Stylized Sets
In contemporary filmmaking, especially in science fic- For a handful of films, realism is beside the point as sets
tion, futurist, and fantasy films, sets are often enhanced, serve to call attention to artifice and highlight the styl-
at times wholly created, by compositing or matting ized as opposed to realistic aspects of the film. In the
and/or CGI (computer-generated imagery). In such 1919 expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,
cases, set design (technically, set extension) becomes an
aspect of postproduction special effects and computer CGI (computer-generated imagery) Images that are not photo-
re-creation. graphically produced but are created on a computer.
Compositing allows the filmmaker to fabricate a expressionism A cinematic style with roots in painting that
set from distinct images. An actor performs in front emerged in Germany between the two world wars. Expressionism is
of a backdrop of a single color (usually blue or green, visually characterized by chiaroscuro lighting and highly stylized sets.
The best-known expressionist filmmakers are Fritz Lang,
hence the alternate terms for compositing: blue screen F. W. Murnau, and G. W. Pabst.
and green screen). Separate images are then shot or
3-1 THE sET 61
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UNIVERSAL/WING NUT FILMS / THE KOBALCOLLECTION
3.17 The expressionist, painted sets reveal the tortured
mental state of the “narrator” in The Cabinet of Dr. Calig-
ari (Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1919).
3.14 and 3.15 For a key scene in Peter Jackson’s
remake of King Kong (2005), Naomi Watts was filmed in
front of a green screen and held in a mock-up of the giant
ape’s hand (covered in green canvas). The composite final
version of this shot includes a skyline shot replacing the
green screen background and the ape’s hand in CGI.
3.18 The fantasy sets for Oz suggest a place that exists
only in Dorothy’s imagination. The Wizard of Oz (Victor
Fleming, 1939).
for example, the hand-painted sets (fig. 3.17) are not
meant to realistically reproduce the streets of Holsten-
wall, where the film is set, or the apartments in which
the characters live. Instead the sets hint at the narrative
frame of the story, that what we see is in essence the
dreamscape of the film’s addled narrator, a patient at
a psychiatric hospital. In The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,
the dreamscape setting is meant to evoke and express a
nightmare mental state from which no escape is possible.
Some films—like The Wizard of Oz—use both fan-
3.16 Zachary Quinto, playing Spock in Star Trek tastic and realistic sets. The highly stylized and color-
(J. J. Abrams, 2009) is filmed on the bridge set (top ful sets that characterize the dream world of Oz (fig.
image) in front of a green screen. The green screen 3.18) are contrasted with the drab, homespun Kansas,
portion of the image is replaced by an image of the which seems by comparison colorless (fig. 3.19). The
elevator interior, creating the illusion that the character film’s final message, that “there’s no place like home,”
is in a different place on the ship. may seem to be at odds with the appeal of the sets, but
62 MIsE-En-scènE
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that may well be the point: that Dorothy needs to get
her head out of the clouds and learn to appreciate the
comfort of the familiar.
In Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the highly stylized,
expressionist sets of the futurist city correspond to a
larger creative argument about the exploitation of
workers in the capitalist system. The atomization of the
future factory worker is dramatized by the sheer scale
of the built environment (fig. 3.20). Note the size of the
various support structures and the factory machines in
the background. At the center of the image stands the
film’s reluctant hero, dressed in white, tiny and alone,
daunted and helpless.
In a nod to the conventions and illusions that char-
3.19 Compared with Oz, Kansas, a real place albeit acterize movie romance, the set of Francis Coppola’s
reproduced on the studio lot, is drab and colorless. But One from the Heart calls attention to its own artifice.
there is more than one way to look at the film’s payoff When, for example, the film’s hero Hank is bereft after
line, “There’s no place like home.” being dumped by his girlfriend Frannie, we find him
moping around the aptly named Reality Wrecking Yard
(fig. 3.21). He is, at this point in the film, an emotional
wreck. The mountains in the distance are an obviously
painted backdrop, and the wrecking yard itself is by
design unconvincing as an exterior image (e.g., the art-
fully arranged junk, the abundance of empty space in
what should be a crowded junkyard). Unlike in most
movies, this set is deliberately designed to look like a set.
3-1f Props
Once the carpenters, electricians, and painters complete
their work, the set dressers step in. Their job is to put
the final touches on the constructed set—to add objects
3.20 The underground factory in Fritz Lang’s futur- (lamps, paintings, photographs, kitchenware, audio
ist parable Metropolis (1927). equipment) that match the design sketches. Objects
added by the set dressers—the artfully arranged “junk”
in the Reality Wrecking Yard in One from the Heart,
for example—are called props, short for properties.
Early on in the history of cinema, filmmakers rec-
ognized the value of props. Slapstick and knockabout
performers in silent film comedies, for example, often
interacted imaginatively with inanimate objects: for
example, Charlie Chaplin’s elegant dance with a broom
in The Bank (1915), or his use of a gas streetlight to
subdue a neighborhood bully in Easy Street (fig. 3.22).
In Sherlock Jr., Buster Keaton structures an
extended gag around a single prop, an exploding pool
ball. First, as a sort of magician’s “reveal” (in which
3.21 The Reality Wrecking Yard in Francis Coppola’s prop Short for property, an object placed in the set. Props may play
One from the Heart (1982). Hank stands amidst the a significant part in the action.
ruins of Vegas’s fabricated neon culture.
3-1 THE sET 63
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3.22 The streetlight gag in Charlie Chaplin’s 1917 3.24 Keaton’s sleight-of-hand at the pool table in
comedy shot Easy Street.
Sherlock Jr.
3.23 A simple prop, a complex gag: the exploding 3.25 A second “reveal” . . . Sherlock Jr. is ready to lob
13-ball in Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. (1924). the villain’s weapon back at him.
the trick is set up), one of Sherlock Jr.’s adversaries
substitutes the exploding ball for a real ball (fig. 3.23).
A game ensues and to the frustration of the villains,
the detective pockets ball after ball, somehow never
touching the 13-ball. Finally, on the last shot of the
sequence, he pockets the 13-ball, but the explosion we
have been waiting for fails to happen (fig 3.24). Not
until later in the film do we discover how this trick
was performed. In an extended chase scene during
which Sherlock Jr. rescues his girlfriend, the detective
pulls the exploding ball out of his pocket (where we
gather he has concealed it all along) and tosses it at
his pursuers, sending them careening off the road (figs.
3.25 and 3.26).
Props can hold plot-turning significance. In sex, 3.26 The comic payoff: the 13-ball foils the villains’
lies, and videotape, Ann finds an earring under her bed. pursuit of Sherlock Jr., enabling his escape with the girl
She holds it up so she (and we) can have a closer look he adores.
64 MIsE-En-scènE
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3.27 The plot of sex, lies, and videotape (Steven
Soderbergh, 1989) hinges on a single (and small) prop,
an earring found under a bed.
3.29 A strategically placed prop lets us know that
it’s the middle of the night.
3.28 The film’s opening shot: a gun. The Big Heat
(Fritz Lang, 1953).
3.30 A gun, a badge, and a letter.
and all at once we recognize the earring . . . it is her
sister’s (fig. 3.27). Together we surmise the rest—that First we see a gun on a desk (fig. 3.28). Apropos
Ann’s sister is having an affair with Ann’s husband. the stage and cinema adage, “if you introduce a gun,
Everyday objects like clocks and watches are often someone better use it,” the gun is picked up by a char-
used as props to establish time in the plot; in an action acter who remains off-screen, and then we hear it fired.
film or thriller they cue us that time is of the essence. The character’s head falls forward into the frame, and
Periodic looks at Snake Plissken’s watch in Escape from we gather that he has used the gun to shoot himself. We
New York (John Carpenter, 1982) remind us of the little then see a woman responding to the sound of the gun-
time he has left to rescue the president. Frequent shots of fire. She pauses in front of a clock at the top of the stairs;
clocks in the 1952 western High Noon (Fred Zinnemann) it is 3 a.m., the dead of night (fig. 3.29). We then see
have a similar effect; like the film’s hero we acknowledge three props strategically placed together: the gun (still in
that time is passing, that the time before the showdown the man’s grasp), a police badge, and a sealed envelope
is closing fast. addressed to the district attorney (fig. 3.30). Absent a
The opening scene of the crime film The Big Heat single line of dialogue, we know that a policeman has
illustrates how strategically placed props can tell a shot himself and has left a suicide note addressed not
story. Through the series of shots that introduce the to the woman at the top of the stairs, whom we assume
film’s plot, not a single line of dialogue is spoken. All (correctly) to be his wife, but to the district attorney to
we have to work with is the mise-en-scène, especially whom such a sealed confession suggests crimes or cor-
four significant props. ruption the policeman can no longer keep secret.
3-1 THE sET 65
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3-2 COSTUMES, MAKEUP, AND HAIR
Mise-en-scène also includes the look of the actors who and spied something in the actor’s facial bone struc-
are costumed, made-up, and coiffed to resemble the ture. Under the pretense of discussing the lot of Brit-
fictional or historical characters they play on screen. ish actors in Hollywood (both Karloff and Whale were
Costume, makeup, and hair are important to the over- from England), Whale befriended Karloff and con-
all effect of an actor’s performance. They are impor- vinced him to test for an unidentified role in a forth-
tant as well to the overall design scheme: the color coming picture, which turned out to be the role of the
palette, the degree of stylization, the time, and the monster in Whale’s Frankenstein. When we look at the
place of the film. before and after pictures of Karloff, first in a suit circa
1931 (fig. 3.31) and then in his makeup as the monster
3-2a From the Drawing Board to the (fig. 3.32), we can see the skill of Pierce and Universal’s
Screen: Costumes, Makeup, and Hair makeup department, and also we can see that Whale
was right—there really is something cadaverous about
The team responsible for “human design” begins with the the actor’s facial bone structure.
raw material, the actor’s physical features. Then, so-called Makeup, including skin prosthetics, is not just the
movie magic behind the scenes is used to transform the stuff of monster movies. Indeed, makeup is routinely
performer through costume, makeup, and hairstyle. We used to fix a character’s age at a certain time in the
tend to notice elements of human design most in certain narrative. For films that span a wide range of historical
genres: horror, historical or period pictures, and science time, changes in makeup and hair can key the changes.
fiction—films in which actors are made to look some- Such changes may be subtle: accentuating wrinkles or
how different from people we are likely to meet today. In dark circles under the eyes, a greying of the hair. Or
the seminal Hollywood monster film Frankenstein, for prosthetics may be used to attend to a greater span of
example, the actor Boris Karloff wore elaborate makeup time, as in Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man. The lead char-
to play the famous monster. While the notion that such acter and narrator of the film, Jack Crabbe, is played as
makeup was somehow realistic seems beside the point— an adult by Dustin Hoffman. The actor was at the time
the monster after all does not exist—what the Universal 33 years old. The character he played ranged from his
Studios makeup artist Jack Pierce achieved proved con- 20s through well over 100 (figs. 3.33 and 3.34).
vincing and endures in our collective consciousness as An image from the era depicted in a period film
the look of Frankenstein’s monster. can be the starting point for the director and design
The Hollywood legend is that the director James team. For example, in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoi-
Whale saw Karloff on the studio lot dressed in a suit nette, the design team used Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun’s
3.31 Boris Karloff at Universal Studios in 1931.
3.32 Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster. Frankenstein
(James Whale, 1931).
66 Mise-en-scène
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3.33 Dustin Hoffman as a twenty-something Jack Crabbe in
Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man, (1970).
Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY
3.34 Same actor. Same character. About 100 years later 3.35 Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun’s 1778 portrait of
(in the story told in the film). Marie Antoinette.
1778 portrait (fig. 3.35) as a source for the costume, the design work also implies that the character is a
makeup, and hair in a playful scene of the young queen confection of sorts, like the candies and cakes she so
enjoying the pleasures of court life (fig. 3.36). Note loves. While Sofia Coppola’s film toys with historical
the billowy white garment, the feathered headpiece, accuracy—much of the music is pop, rock, and hip-
the white pancake makeup, and the heavy rouge on hop, and Marie behaves like a contemporary American
the cheeks. The set, makeup, hair, and costume design teenager—the mise-en-scène grounds the story in pre-
work hand in hand so that the actress Kirsten Dunst revolutionary France and creates an evocative portrait
looks like the famous image of the legendary monarch; of the young queen.
3-2b Communicating
Character through Costumes,
Makeup, and Hair
Costuming, makeup, and hairstyle are part of
a film’s visual shorthand; we can apprehend
a character’s social standing, occupation, even
their attitude toward life by how they are
made to look by the costume, makeup, and
hair departments. The titular character in the
Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski, a slacker
par excellence who goes by the nickname
3.36 Kirsten Dunst as the eighteenth-century French queen in “the Dude,” lounges for much of the film in
Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola, 2006). baggy shorts and a filthy T-shirt, unshaven
3-2 cOsTUMes, MAKeUP, AnD HAiR 67
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3.37 Jeffrey Lebowski (left), AKA “the Dude,” abid- 3.38 Julian, in one of his several Armani suits, with a
ing at the bowling alley, dressed in his signature baggy client in Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo (1980).
shorts and rumpled T-shirt. The Big Lebowski (Joel
Coen, 1998).
and unkempt, his hair greasy and long (fig. 3.37). His appearance of being carefree is challenged at every turn
slovenly appearance corresponds to a carefree existence of the plot. Thugs toss a marmot into his bathtub and
in which, as the film’s loopy cowpoke narrator tells soil his rug. He loses the other Jeffrey Lebowski’s ransom
us, “the Dude abides.” What happens, then, is that his money, and his bowling buddy Donnie is gunned down
by pseudo-anarchists. Throughout
the Dude looks like the wrong guy
in the wrong sort of movie, which
makes his predicaments all the more
entertaining.
Conversely, Julian, the preening
male prostitute in Paul Schrader’s
American Gigolo, is meticulously
dressed in custom-tailored Armani
suits, his face always clean-shaven,
his hair perfect (fig. 3.38). When he
is falsely accused of a murder and
his upper-class clients abandon him,
3.39 The ragged petty thief, Nikita, just after her arrest. Nikita (Luc Besson, the façade comes undone. We see
1990). a less polished version of Julian as
he desperately searches for the real
killer among the lower-class hustlers
with whom he once worked. A for-
mer client who provides him with
an alibi for the night of the murder
saves him from a prison sentence.
And more important, he is redeemed
because she has “bought” more than
just the façade; indeed she has seen
through his polished image to the
real man inside.
Character transformation—
from human to monster (The Wolf-
man), from tramp to millionaire
3.40 New clothes, makeup, and hair transform Nikita, the street urchin, (The Gold Rush), or from mousy
into a sophisticated superspy. secretary to the Catwoman (Batman
68 MIsE-En-scènE
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Returns)—can be accomplished when
an actor’s performance is supported
by changes in costume, makeup, and
hair. In Nikita, Anne Parillaud (in the
title role) begins the film dirtied-up in
ragged clothes, dull makeup (no lip-
stick), and unkempt hair (Fig. 3.39).
After her secret training as a spy and
assassin, she is the picture of French
female sophistication in a tailored
black blazer and pearls, her hair
cut and combed to perfection, her
makeup now highlighting her eyes
and lips (Fig. 3.40). It helps of course
that Parillaud, like most movie stars,
3.41 Robert DeNiro as the boxer Jake LaMotta in his prime. Raging Bull
(Martin Scorsese, 1980). is beautiful in the first place.
Some actors undergo months of
special diets or exercise to reshape
their bodies for a role. In Rag-
ing Bull, Robert DeNiro trained
for weeks to play the boxer Jake
LaMotta in his fitter, younger days
and then gained sixty pounds to
portray LaMotta overweight and
boozed-up later in life (figs. 3.41
and 3.42). While prosthetics, hair,
and makeup certainly contributed
to the character’s transformation
over time (note, for example, his
receding hairline and bulbous nose
in the later-day shot), it is the actor
3.42 Same actor, same film, different look: Robert DeNiro as Jake LaMotta, who embodies the change and truly
nightclub owner and retired boxer makes it credible.
3-3 BLOCKING AND PERFORMANCE
Not only is the look of the actors an aspect of mise- of a character, we can believe in the fictional world that
en-scène, but so is their positioning within the set. character inhabits. The actor’s performance also needs
Where the actors move within the space—which to fit the visual language of a film; a film that strives for
film and theater directors call blocking—is carefully naturalism would require a different acting style from
worked out before the cameras roll. As we will see, one that is highly stylized. The point here is that actors
blocking conveys story information and can create a are more than visual design elements, though on a very
compelling image. Yet acting is more than mise-en- basic level they contribute to the larger visual language
scène, of course; the actor must convincingly embody of the film.
the character through posture, gesture, facial expres-
sion, and voice. blocking The choreographed positioning of actors and
Performance is at the most basic level a key to engag- camera(s).
ing audiences: if we can believe in the actor’s portrayal
3-3 BLOcKInG AnD PERFORMAncE 69
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3-3a Blocking and Narrative
The term blocking is used to refer to the choreographed
positioning of actors and camera(s). Combined with fram-
ing (discussed in chapter 4), blocking is a key aspect of
composition created by an integration of mise-en-scène
and camera work. A key aspect of blocking is rooted in
stagecraft and involves the playing out of a scene as actors
move to specific “marks” (often taped or drawn on the
floor) following scripted cues, preset lines of dialogue or
scripted physical actions. Blocking can be static (charac-
ters standing or sitting in place for an entire shot) or fluid
(characters moving to prescribed marks). For most Holly-
wood movies, blocking is meant to appear natural, to sim-
ulate realistically how people might position themselves as
they talk and act in a given setting. But while the goal may 3.43 Jerry’s arrival at Lucy’s apartment in The
be realism, blocking is seldom improvised or inadvertent. Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937).
A pivotal scene in the 1937 romantic comedy The
Awful Truth illustrates how blocking supports the story.
Jerry and Lucy are recently divorced. Dan is Lucy’s new
beau, an Oklahoma oilman who is sweet but dull. Jerry
wants to break up Lucy and Dan. Dan’s mother, who
enters the scene late, also wants to break up her son’s rela-
tionship with Lucy. A close look at the blocking shows
how the physical relationships among the characters shift
to support the story arc over the course of the scene.
The scene begins as Jerry arrives at Lucy’s apart-
ment. He steps into the room and stops between Dan
and Lucy (fig. 3.43). Dan then walks behind Jerry and
moves next to Lucy, putting his arm around her (fig.
3.44). The blocking subtly reveals Jerry and Dan’s
struggle for Lucy’s affection.
Jerry notices Dan’s possessive gesture and to make 3.44 A simple gesture unsettles the scene.
Dan uncomfortable, he refers to Lucy’s habit of keep-
ing important legal documents in her stocking drawer
(“every legal paper we had smelled of sachet . . . even
the marriage certificate”). After Jerry reminisces about
a practical joke played by a bellhop during their honey-
moon, Lucy pulls out from under Dan’s embrace, walks
behind both men, and sits down on the arm of a chair.
Dan sits on the loveseat and then Jerry sits quite close
to him, again taking the space between Dan and Lucy
(fig. 3.45). We recognize from the theatrical blocking
as well as the familiar romantic comedy trope that this
romantic triangle will have to be sorted out.
Dan’s “Ma” enters the scene and walks to her mark.
In doing so she strategically increases the space between
Dan and Lucy (fig. 3.46). Ma has arrived after hearing
an account of Jerry and Lucy’s divorce, gossip that puts
Lucy in an unfavorable light. She recounts some gossip 3.45 The three characters keep changing places, chairs,
about Lucy and her handsome music teacher: “You do and positions in the frame.
70 MIsE-En-scènE
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sing divinely, dear, but I never realized until this after-
noon that you had a teacher—and a very handsome
one I understand.” After a cut to a shot revealing Dan’s
discomfort and Ma’s pleasure at unsettling her son’s
relationship with Lucy, the characters are reset to new
marks: the men sit at the bottom and edge of the frame
while the two women stand. Now that there are four
characters in the scene, the split is more amicable; with a
romantic triangle, one person is sure to be left out. With
four, it’s simpler, just a matter of pairing off (fig. 3.47).
Though the uncertainty regarding the night Lucy
spent with her music teacher did lead to their divorce,
Jerry calls Ma’s accusations regarding the music teacher
“silly.” Tongue firmly in cheek, Jerry “defends” Lucy’s
3.46 Dan’s Ma endeavors to (literally and figuratively) honor. While Jerry talks, Dan moves to a mark behind
come between her son and his new girlfriend, Lucy. his mother. The two couples are now as they should be,
as they will be at the end of the film: Jerry and Lucy,
Dan and his mother. Significantly, in this last image
from the scene, the men stand at the periphery as the
two women occupy center stage (fig. 3.48).
3-3b Blocking and Visual Design
In addition to using blocking to visually communi-
cate the dynamic among characters, filmmakers think
about the placement of figures in terms of the design
of the image. In Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, for
example, the migrant farm workers are spaced across
the frame in a way that is balanced and beautiful; they
are depicted as a harmonious part of the larger prairie
landscape (fig. 3.49).
In an image set on the following day (fig. 3.50),
3.47 The men sit at the bottom and edge of the frame we see these same workers harvesting wheat. In both
while the two women sort things out for them. images, individuation and performance are beside the
point: the human figures are part of the larger design of
the shots; they are aspects of the setting.
A similar use of staged human figures is apparent
in the breathtaking Death Valley sequence in Michel-
angelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point. From a great dis-
tance we see young lovers as they decorate the barren
landscape (fig. 3.51). We have no idea who they are
or why they are there, but that doesn’t really matter.
Instead, we see them as organic aspects of a dramatic
geographic setting.
Antonioni’s emphasis on design over character in
Zabriskie Point was nothing new. After a particularly
disastrous reception at a screening of his groundbreak-
ing melodrama L’avventura at the 1960 Cannes Film
Festival, Antonioni proclaimed that cinema had grown
3.48 Here staging reveals the inevitable couples: overly tied to story, that filmmakers needed to return
Jerry and Lucy, Dan and his Ma. the medium to its constitutive, visual roots. His film
3-3 BLOcKInG AnD PERFORMAncE 71
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83680_ch03_ptg01_hires_054-083.indd 71 10/17/12 2:14 PM
rather intentionally disparaged
narrative conventions and high-
lighted mise-en-scène.
What little story we have to
work with in L’avventura concerns
Claudia’s half-hearted search for
Anna, a friend who went missing
on a pleasure cruise. After Anna’s
disappearance, Claudia takes up
with Anna’s former lover, San-
dro. The two drift together; and
while Claudia has her doubts and
regrets, she does little to discour-
age this new relationship. When
Claudia and Sandro stop at a
3.49 Migrant workers pause for a benediction blessing the harvest. Theatrical police station to inquire about the
blocking as design: Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978). official search for Anna, Claudia
waits outside and quickly finds
herself the object of the gaze of
several men (fig. 3.52).
Antonioni carefully placed the
figures within the frame to achieve
a certain visual design, but he also
used blocking for thematic pur-
poses. When Claudia subsequently
walks forward into the foreground
of the frame, the men don’t move,
but their heads all turn to face her.
We can see from her facial expres-
sion that she is now aware she is
being watched (fig. 3.53). In a sub-
sequent shot, the men move closer
to her. As they crowd her, the dra-
matic staging serves to heighten the
3.50 Individuation and performance are irrelevant here; the human fig-
ures serve as props within the landscape. seeming threat they pose (fig. 3.54).
Antonioni never explains who
these men are or why they look at
Claudia the way they do. They can’t
possibly know what she’s done
(with her lost friend’s lover) or what
she hasn’t done (she hasn’t looked
all that hard for her missing friend).
Instead, it is in the relationship of
bodies in space that Antonioni
finds a visual equivalent for Clau-
dia’s shame and guilt. The apparent
threat posed by these anonymous
men, at the very least that they
judge her harshly, is the very sort
3.51 Blocking used to create a compelling image: Young lovers litter the Death of uncomfortable moment she has
Valley landscape in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970). endeavored all film to avoid.
72 MIsE-En-scènE
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3-3c Screen Acting
Styles
Though it is not technically an aspect
of mise-en-scène, acting is at once
dependent upon and a formal exten-
sion of design (costumes, makeup,
and hair; blocking). The following
brief introduction to certain key
schools of acting suggests the signifi-
cance of performance to the larger
visual language of the film.
Performance styles evolve in
tandem with other formal elements
3.52 The pictorial equivalent of guilt and shame. L’avventura (Michelan- of the medium. Silent film acting
gelo Antonioni, 1960). resembled stage acting, much as
many silent films were set and shot
like stage plays. In the absence of
dialogue, actors tended to signal
emotions with exaggerated gestures
and facial expressions. Even the sub-
tlest silent screen acting eschewed
realism in favor of heightened emo-
tions; the dramatic superseded the
realistic as filmmakers and film
actors strived for a larger-than-life
performance (fig 3.55).
With the advent of sound cin-
ema, a more naturalistic style of
acting emerged to lend a height-
ened realism to the medium. But
even as gestures and facial expres-
3.53 A closer look at the same mix of emotions: Claudia realizes that she sions became subtler, realism is a
is being watched (and judged) in L’avventura.
relative rather than absolute aim
for the screen actor. The goal
is to be convincing within the
larger world depicted in the film,
as two spy films released in the
1960s illustrate. In From Russia
with Love Sean Connery plays
James Bond, a spy with expensive
tastes in wine, cars, and women,
a swashbuckler who plays by his
own rules (fig. 3.56). Connery
plays Bond with an easygoing,
“anyone for tennis” style; he is
at once unflappable and indomi-
table . . . a supremely suave and
confident superspy. The success of
3.54 As the men move closer to her, Claudia begins to worry that these Connery’s performance lay in the
strangers may mean her harm. actor’s keen understanding of the
3-3 BLOcKInG AnD PERFORMAncE 73
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3.56 Sean Connery as 007 James Bond, the irresistible
and irrepressible British spy in From Russia with Love
3.55 One of the most respected actors of her (Terrence Young, 1963).
generation, Lillian Gish conveys sadness as she holds
her dying child in her arms in D. W. Griffith’s Way Down
East (1920). Though less exaggerated in style than most
silent screen acting, Gish’s performance did not aim for
subtlety of expression and gesture.
sort of free-wheeling, high-concept action film he is
in. Richard Burton’s performance as the aging British
spy Alec Leamas in The Spy Who Came in from the
Cold released two years later is by comparison muted
and melancholy (fig. 3.57). Connery’s Bond is a man
of action; Burton’s spy is a quiet, crafty operator. Both
performances are successful not because the actors
realistically reproduce the character of a British spy
during the Cold War—after all most of us have no idea
what makes such a person tick—but because they are 3.57 Richard Burton as the melancholy British spy Alec
believable, convincing, and interesting within the con- Leamas in the screen adaptation of Jon Le Carré’s The
text of the respective films. Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Martin Ritt, 1965).
Many screen actors claim that their goal is a kind of
truth, a psychological depth that can only be achieved
by really understanding the motiva-
tions and emotions of the characters
they play. Adherents of “the method”
school of acting, for example, draw
from personal experience rather than
techniques of impersonation. In an
effort to produce a fuller, more life-
like performance, method actors
analyze not only the characters they
play within the narrative but their
own personal connection to the feel-
ings felt by these characters at differ-
ent points in the story. When James 3.58 When the method actor James Dean (as the suburban American teen-
Dean used “the method” to get at ager Jim Stark in Nicholas Ray’s 1955 melodrama Rebel without a Cause)
the inner torment of the 1950s sub- shouts: “You’re tearing me apart!” his facial expression and hand gestures
urban American teenager, his every reveal the depth of his frustration.
74 Mise-en-scène
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